The reason I stopped taking finasteride is because I noticed very big loss of libido. Now that I’m off for a week, I feel back to my old self, and noticed many other side-effects the drug had on me.
The libido ones were alarming but not devastating.
A lot less excitement,
Sometimes no pleasure with orgasm,
testicles felt smaller,
watery ejaculate,
less convincing erections
All of those are back to normal.
I didn’t feel anxiety or depression but I did notice mood swings, in the course of the 4 months i took the drug I had 3 bursts of crying for hours, 2 of which were not caused by anything. other from those mood swings I noticed something that other people dont report, I noticed that I had more empathy.
For example I cared more about what people thought of me. I didnt notice it when i was taking the drug, but after I stopped I noticed I stopped caring about a lot of things like being a good student to please my parents. Honestly, I’ve always been somebody who feels less empathy than others and I dont really care what people think of me, but finasteride changed that. Wasnt necessarily a bad thing tough. That and the less libido wasnt that bad since I think my libido was too much. Although I fear permanent damage to it and it went from too much to too little.
Also a last side effect I noticed is fat gain or the inability to lose fat. I know I don’t gain fat easily, although I do gain some eventually. In my teens I had the worst diet of my class(we had a homework where we had to note what we ate) but I was relatively skinny. While taking finasteride I started to workout 5 times a week, I just finished the first month at the same time I stopped finasteride. I normally respond to cardio very well for fat loss, once I did 3 sessions of cardio a week for a month and lost 8 pounds. so now this was 5 times a week combining cardio and weight training and I gained 5 pounds, 2 of which I think is muscle, the rest is probably fat, I also didnt change my diet noticeably. So the muscle gain seems to be not affected but I definitely feel and somewhat look more fat, although its not dramatic.
So its interesting what finasteride did to me… the psychological part had positives and negatives, the libido loss had positives also but the negatives and especially (maybe) permanent negatives were definitely worrisome, but what really settles the deal for me is the fat gain or inability to lose fat thing. Its really bad to think Ive been working out for the most of my life in a month but still got fatter(while not changing my diet noticeably).