Welcome to our community. Please fill in the following template as a way of introducing yourself, and helping others to understand your background and situation.
Where are you from (country)? United states
How did you find this forum (Google search – if so, what search terms? Via link from a forum or website – if so, what page? Other?) Via my own research into 5-alpha-reductase inhibitors
What is your current age, height, weight? 20, 5’11”, 135 lbs
What specific drug did you use (finasteride, dutasteride, saw palmetto, isotretinoin/Accutane, fluoxetine, sertraline, citalopram, leuprorelin, etc…)? Lion’s Mane, and cacao powder
What dose did you take (eg. 1 mg/day, 1 mg every other day etc.)? 3 Extract pills a day.
What condition was being treated with the drug? Cognitive dysfunction
For how long did you take the drug (weeks/months/years)? 1 month
Date when you started the drug? May of 2021
Date when you quit the drug? June of 2022
Age when you quit? 18
How did you quit (cold turkey or taper off)? cold turkey
How long into your usage did you notice the onset of side effects?
I noticed some side effects about 2 weeks into taking lions mane, including lower libido and changes to my facial structure, but didn’t make the connection until later.
What side effects did you experience that have yet to resolve since discontinuation? Low libido, depression, anxiety, poor sleep, fatigue, subcutaneous fat loss, feminized facial features, veins on penis and feet, sunken eyes, erectile dysfunction, anhedonia, weight loss, beard hair color change.
Check the boxes that apply. You can save your post first, then interactively check/uncheck the boxes by clicking on them. If your symptoms change, please update your list.
Sexual [X] Loss of Libido / Sex Drive [X] Erectile Dysfunction [ ] Complete Impotence [X] Loss of Morning Erections [X] Loss of Spontaneous Erections [X] Loss of Nocturnal Erections [ ] Watery Ejaculate [X] Reduced Ejaculate [ ] Inability or Difficulty to Ejaculate / Orgasm [ ] Reduced Sperm Count / Motility
Mental [X] Emotional Blunting / Emotionally Flat [X] Difficulty Focusing / Concentrating [ ] Confusion [X] Memory Loss / Forgetfulness [ ] Stumbling over Words / Losing Train of Thought [ ] Slurring of Speech [X] Lack of Motivation / Feeling Passive / Complacency [X] Extreme Anxiety / Panic Attacks [X] Severe Depression / Melancholy [X] Suicidal Thoughts
Physical [X] Penile Tissue Changes (narrowing, shrinkage, wrinkled) [ ] Penis curvature / rotation on axis [ ] Testicular Pain [ ] Testicular Shrinkage / Loss of Fullness [X] Genital numbness / sensitivity decrease [ ] Weight Gain [ ] Gynecomastia (male breasts) [X] Muscle Wastage [X] Muscle Weakness [ ] Joint Pain [ ] Dry / Dark Circles under eyes
Misc [ ] Prostate pain [X] Persistent Fatigue / Exhaustion [X] Stomach Pains / Digestion Problems [ ] Constipation / “Poo Pellets” [ ] Vision - Acuity Decrease / Blurriness [ ] Tinnitus (ringing or high pitched sound in ears) [ ] Hearing loss [ ] Increased hair loss [ ] Frequent urination [ ] Lowered body temperature
[ ] Other (please explain)
What (if any) treatments have you undertaken to recover from your side effects since discontinuation of the drug?
HCG monotherapy. 250 IU EOD didn’t seem to do much, thought doses in the range of 750IU EOD seemed to help keep me stable.
If you have pre or post-drug blood tests, what hormonal changes have you encountered since discontinuing the drug (please post your test results in the “Blood Tests” section and link to them in your post)?
April of 2022: Estradiol at 20 PG/ML,
Total test at 444 nG/dL, and Free test- 73.4 nG/dL
Anything not listed in the above questions you’d like to share about your experience?
Tell us your story, in your own words, about your usage and side effects experienced while on/off the drug.
I’ve been a lurker on this forum for over 2 years now, and have been putting off writing my report, due to its lengthy nature.
Where do I even begin?
There is an immense amount of lore that goes with this, all of which I guess i’ll just spill.
I’m currently 20 years old, with 21 approaching this coming October. I began experimenting with drugs in high school due to curiosity, loneliness, and undiagnosed mental health conditions (namely depression, anxiety, and ADHD). I was, and still am, a very exploratory, open minded person. I began consuming cannabis on a regular basis towards the beginning of highschool. Around this same time, I began to seek out psychiatric treatment, namely for my symptoms of depression and anxiety that the chronic cannabis use was likely exacerbating.
I was put through the wringer with medications. SSRIs, SRNIs, amphetamines, atypical antipsychotics, you name it. Everything under the sun, to no avail. Eventually, I was prescribed benzos for the anxiety. These worked wonderfully at first. I felt like I finally had reprieve from years of being uncomfortable in my own skin. To make a long story short, I quickly spiraled into a vicious addiction to the benzos, on top of already being dependent on cannabis.
I dropped out of high school, and my parents sent me off to inpatient rehab. I attended this program for a month, before being forced to leave thanks to medical insurance cutting out after that. Gotta love the American healthcare system.
I returned home, and was actually doing okay for a while. I returned back to highschool, halfway through my junior year. Having a support network of friends really helped, as the loneliness was a huge driver of the drug problems in the first place. Then, covid came along. We were forced to switch to online classes. Alas, I fell back on my old ways. I quickly returned into poly-drug use. I managed to stay away from benzos for the most part, but was heavily using cannabis and anything else I could get my hands on.
I’ve always been very research/science oriented, and had been watching some of the developments in clinical work examining the use of therapeutic ketamine for mental health conductions. I underwent 5 rounds of extremely costly infusions, which nearly eliminated my depression and anxiety symptoms. Alas, the results were transient, and I slipped back into my former state within about a month, unable to afford the costly maintenance infusions. Thanks again, US medical system.
I was then prescribed a drug called gabapentin. Having both a deep interest in, and somewhat of an understanding of neuropharmacology, I knew that I could induce desirable psychoactive effects using this drug under the right conditions. I began abusing the everliving sh*t out of it.
I could go in depth about the nuances of the mechanism of action of this drug, but to sum things up succinctly, in large doses it creates an inhibitory state in the brain similar to that produced by alcohol and benzos. The rapid onset of tolerance to this drug was the only thing barring me from abusing it every single day.
I would take the drug in super high doses on one day, then leave 2 days for my tolerance to reset. Little did I know, each time I instated the drug in high doses, then removed it, I was going through withdrawals. In those gap days where I wouldn’t dose, I would experience intense anxiety and depression, which I thought was just normal given my average state.
Unfortunately, when the brain in interacting with sedative/hypnotics like benzos, alcohol, and gabapentin, it is host to a lovely phenomenon known as kindling. This is a phenomenon whereby when a drug is repeatedly removed, then reinstated, each subsequent withdrawal becomes much more severe due to changes in receptors by way of LTP.
One day, I decided to do away with all drugs. I had began exercising, and finally wanted to get sober for myself. I dropped the gabapentin cold turkey, after the extended period of heavy abuse.
A couple days later, all hell broke loose. I basically had a snap from reality. I had no idea what was happening, but it was like the worst panic attack/dissociation I had ever experienced. It was like my body was shutting down. I begged my dad to take me to the hospital, to no avail. I somehow had the wherewithal to take the gabapentin, thinking it could be related. Within about 20 minutes of dosing, things calmed down about, maybe about 50%. Later that evening, I noticed that something was horribly wrong.
I have always been a very abstract thinker, with an extraordinarily rich and vivid imagination. Now, though, I couldn’t even visualize things in my head. Couldn’t see pictures, couldn’t string sentences together, I even lost my entire inner monologue. My mind, previously colored with multiple streams of thought going at once, was completely quiet. My mental faculties were completely evicerated. On top of this, my emotions were completely gone. Previously a very emotional and sensitive person, I could’ve watched my dog get hit by a car in front of me and felt nothing.
Additionally, I began experiencing absolutely devastating withdrawal from the drug when it would wear off. The anxiety and depression was nothing short of hellish. I also developed burning sensations in my nerves in basically every extremity. For the next 6 months or so, I arduously tapered myself off the drug, still experiencing every single one of the symptoms listed above.
The withdrawal symptoms slowly eased, but the cognitive dysfunction did not. I was running 8 miles a day and eating a perfect diet to attempt to recover, to no avail. To this day, I believe I experienced a severe bout of excitotoxicity via a rebound glutamate storm that wreaked wide-scale neuronal damage similar to a TBI.
I continued to try to heal from this devastating blow for months following complete cessation of the drug. I made very little progress despite my efforts.
I began looking very heavily into psychedelic medicine, particularly microdosing, as a way of facilitating synaptogenesis between whatever connections I still had, and possibly even promoting some hippocampal neurogenesis to reclaim some semblance of memory.
I finally bit the bullet, and began microdosing with psilocybin mushrooms. I didn’t notice too much at first, but about 2 weeks into things, it was like a sudden cascade of healing was bestowed upon me. my depression and anxiety began to subside, my energy came back, I began to operate from a place of genuine empathy for others and self love. I felt like a kid again, and was absolutely captivated by the taste of food, nature, the beauty of sunsets, everything, just being. My inner monologue gradually began to return, I became articulate again, memories I had forgotten were popping back into my head. It was nothing short of a miracle.
Motivated by this, I began to look even more into microdosing research. I became particularly interested in the works of Paul Stamets, a mycologist who developed his own microdosing protocol.
His protocol included the use of lions mane, another mushroom that is purported to be beneficial for cognitive function. I looked into the existing research at the time, which showed it promotes factors of BDNF and NGF, both of which are heavily implicated in neuronal plasticity and adaptation. I concluded I could stand to benefit from it, so I began supplementing pretty heavily with it alongside my microdosing.
Thus began my descent into PFS hell. It was completely unbeknownst to me that research showed lions mane to be a 5-alpha-reductase inhibitor. Besides, I wouldn’t have known what this meant, nor known of the potential dangers of these compounds.
About 2 weeks into supplementing the lions mane, I noticed a marked decrease in my libido. No worries, I was really into weightlifting at the time, and thought I could ameliorate any lost libido by means of going hard in the gym. I didn’t notice it at the time, but my face also began to look very different.
fast forward another 2 weeks, and It was around this time that I began taking raw cacao powder, in an effort to further reap cognitive benefits from its phenols. Again, I began unknowingly ingesting another 5ari (raw cacao is heavily laden with 5ari polyphenols).
On the third day into this, I experienced a panic attack whilst trying to fall asleep, something I had never really experienced before besides when I had been withdrawing from gabapentin. It lasted hours, and was just absolutely horrible. My thoughts were so vivid, loud, and frightening.
for the next two weeks, I experienced these panic attacks intermittently- about every other day. towards the end of those two weeks, though, they started to decrease in both intensity and frequency.
after that was when sh*t really hit the fan. Almost exactly 2 weeks after my first one, the panic attacks got SOOOO much worse, lasting even longer. even when I wasn’t in full blown panic, there was this ever-present internal restlessness, and skin-crawling anxiety, worse than anything I had ever experienced. I could barely sleep; I would consistently wake up before falling into deep sleep, like 5 times a night. I watched as my muscle melted away from my body, and I couldn’t even surmise the energy to get out of bed. I was completely depersonalized with heavy vertigo, and everything looked plastic and fake. I truly thought I was dying. My face changed so much I could barely recognize myself. My libido was absolutely nonexistent, and my penis felt like a foreign object attached to my body, but this was the least of my concern at the time.
the mental side of things started to let up about 2 to 3 months into things, with minor recoveries coming in waves. I could get out of bed again, my sleep improved, and eventually the full blown panic attacks subsided, just in time for me to go to college. My libido came back to about 35% of where it was. Over the course of the next 6 months, most things started to gradually get to maybe 45%.
Then, I accidentally took a heavy dose of a vitamin C supplement containing citrus bioflavonoids. I felt like I was back at square one. The insomnia came back with a vengeance, and for about a month, I felt like I couldn’t go beyond a light sleep. It was like I was stuck in this hypnagogic, half conscious state for the whole night. I also developed a complete intolerance to exercise, whereas I had previously been weightlifting often. Any amount of weightlifting would leave me extremely ill, worsening almost all of my symptoms across the board.
The next 6 months were pretty rough. My symptoms were kind of all over the place. I crashed pretty hard at one point again due to excessive masturbation. I got some blood work done during this period, results are posted somewhere towards the top.
I guess this puts us at about a year ago. I was in a semi-stable state, when I decided to stop taking clonidine, an anti-hypertensive I had been taking for years to help with sleep. For some reason, this led to almost a complete recovery of my symptoms for about a week, after which I crashed again thanks to eating a ton of soy. I was never able to get back to that almost-recovered state.
I began taking HCG monotherapy following joekool’s protocol sometime in the fall of last year. 250 IU eod really didn’t do a whole lot, but doses in the 750IU range seemed to help stabilize me and prevent further worsening of symptoms. Got paranoid about desensitizing my leydig cells with those doses, so I tapered back down to 250 IU and have been on and off that since about April.
My symptoms have been somewhat stable recently, but I think i’m experiencing a new crash thanks to excessive intake of kimchi over these past weeks. I’m still experiencing low libido, numbness, facial changes, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, anxiety, and depression, amongst almost all of the other symptoms I began with, albeit to a lesser degree.
There is a subreddit dedicated to lions mane recovery, with tons of other people reporting similar symptoms as me. I am 100% convinced these people have come down with PFS as well, the overlap in symptoms, and mechanisms of the compounds are far too plentiful for it to be anything else, IMO. Pretty parsimonious conclusion if you go over there and look at what these people are struggling with.
There’s a lot i’m neglecting to write about, because i’m tired of typing at this point. I’m honestly so lost. I’m young, and every day it feels like I’m living with a ghost of myself. it has been such a long, painful road, and I am so fucking tired. and yet, I still have hope that I’ll get past this. I still look forward to the day when I recover from this affliction and can begin living my life again, instead of just existing.