My story

Member Stories
#1

  1. Where are you from (country)?
    Brazil

  2. 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?)
    Google

  3. What is your current age, height, weight?
    33, 167cm, 58kg

  4. Do you excercise regularly? If so, what type of excercise?
    Not regularly

  5. What type of diet do you eat (vegetarian, meat eater, raw, fast-food/organic healthy)?
    Sort of an adapted Paleo diet

  6. Why did you take Finasteride (hair loss, BPH, other)?
    hair loss

  7. For how long did you take Finasteride (weeks/months/years)?
    Around 10 years, I can’t remember when exactly I started

  8. How old were you, and WHEN (date) did you start Finasteride?
    Around 20-21 year old, that was close to 2001

  9. How old were you when you quit, and WHEN (date) did you quit?
    In the end of 2009, close to December

  10. How did you quit (cold turkey or taper off)?
    Cold turkey

  11. What type of Finasteride did you use – Propecia, Proscar, Fincar or other generic?
    Generic

  12. What dose did you take (eg. 1 mg/day, 1 mg every other day etc.)?
    1 mg/day

  13. How long into your use of Finasteride did you notice the onset of side effects?
    By the time I was using I didn’t really notice side effects. They were quite mild and spread along the many years I’ve took it.

  14. What side effects did you experience while on the drug that have yet to resolve since discontinuation?

Put an X beside all that apply:

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
[ ] Reduced Ejaculate
[ ] Inability to Ejaculate / Orgasm
[ ] Reduced Sperm Count / Motility

Mental
[x] Emotional Blunting / Emotionally Flat
[x] Difficulty Focusing / Concentrating
[x] Confusion
[x] Memory Loss / Forgetfullness
[x] 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)
[x] Penis curvature / rotation on axis
[x] Testicular Pain
[x] Testicular Shrinkage / Loss of Fullness
[x] Genital numbness / sensitivity decrease
[ ] Weight Gain
[ ] Gynecomastia (male breasts)
[ ] Muscle Wastage
[x] Muscle Weakness
[ ] Joint Pain
[ ] Dry / Dark Circles under eyes

Misc
[x] Prostate pain
[x] Persistent Fatigue / Exhaustion
[ ] Stomach Pains / Digestion Problems
[ ] Constipation / “Poo Pellets”
[ ] Vision - Acuity Decrease / Blurriness
[ ] Increased hair loss
[x] Frequent urination
[ ] Lowered body temperature

[ ] Other (please explain)

  1. What (if any) treatments have you undertaken to recover from your side effects since discontinuation of the drug?
    None yet

  2. If you have pre or post-Finasteride bloodtests, what hormonal changes have you encountered since discontinuing the drug (pls post your test results in the “Blood Tests” section and link to them in your post)?
    I haven’t had any tests yet

  3. Anything not listed in the above questions you’d like to share about your experience with Finasteride?
    It took me quite a while to recognise my ED and co-relate it to the use of this drug. Before that I have tried exploring solutions for possible problems that actually doesn’t exist: trying many diets, many foods that would boost my libido, improve my erection, doing regular exercises for many months, doing pelvic exercises. Now, after 5 years I first stated noticing better the side effects of the drug it finally became clear the relationship between both: problems and drug usage. Looking back, its also clear that minor side effects existed before but I haven’t took much time to recognise them back there. Probably it was easier to blame the lack of interest in ex-girlfriends’ personalities than recognising slightly signs of ED for instance.

  4. Tell us your story, in your own words, about your Finasteride usage and side effects experienced while on/off the drug.
    I started taking it because of hair loss. I didn’t felt much of the minor side effects during usage due being sexually active I guess. After I stopped taking it the side effects definitely became very strong in a short period of time. The biggest problem nowadays is suffering from ED despite being young (33 year old) and heaving a healthy lifestyle: I eat very well, I exercise from time to time, I hardly drink any alcohol (once a month maybe), I don’t smoke and I think I have a pretty positive attitude towards life considering the issue here described.

#2

Welcome to the site. You might benefit from having some endocrine blood tests done, testosterone, SHBG (sex hormone binding globulin) and 3a-androstanediol glucuronide being the highest priority. Mew has a more extensive list at the top of the Blood Tests section.

Your story is similar to my own experience, complete with the frequent urination. That issue goes away for me through correcting (somewhat) secondary hypogonadism via clomiphene, but clomiphene has its own set of issues to be cautious about (blocks receptors needed for sexual stimulation, floaters, etc).

#3

Thanks kazman, that is where I’m standing now: I want to do some tests and see how the results look like

I’m currently in Sydney, I need to find a lab here or get it done by one overseas. Not sure if that is possible though.

I actually forgot to mention but one of the most noticeable side effects I’ve suffered from was related with urinary frequency. It’s better now, it’s hard to say how much better because it has been 5 years since I first started suffering from PFS and, therefore, from this.

What really got me confused and made me take a while to correlate the side effects with the drug was that I had some complications with my back around 6 months after I stopped using it. Because of it, I somehow believed that a severe pain in my sciatica had something to do with many of the problems I was having: pelvic pain, strange feeling in my scrotum, a slight rotation in my penis’s axis and a bending to the left, slightly ED and urinary frequency urgency.

I though that somehow by damaging by back disc L5S1 I had developed some nerve/tissue shrinkage that could be correlated with these symptoms.

After almost a year I had my back problem I went to a urologist. I had some blood tests done, bladder tests, penis and scrotum checked and he said nothing was wrong. He gave me some samples of Cialis but I never took them. I just didn’t want to believe my ED and the other problems had nothing to do with my back issue.

I gave up searching for further help and trying to make this correlation after I contacted a doctor I had seen before, back in Brazil, when I first discovered I had a prolapse disc (6 months before I had severe sciatica pain). He also said that the symptoms I was feeling had nothing to do with my back problem.

I was lost and slowly started to shift my attention to diet changes, lack of exercises and activities that would improve my mood, etc. It was when I started trying to solve the side effects from the drug by making lifestyle changes.

They definitely helped me on getting healthier. Not that I wasn’t before compared to most people: I never drank much neither smoke or take heavy drugs, I was never much into junky food, etc. But that was when I decided to quit sugar and all refined & processed food. I developed some good knowledge about nutrition, diets, etc. I was great but it didn’t helped much with the symptoms I had and still have.

I don’t know how it was for most people, apparently by what I read here for a lot of guys it was pretty obvious that they were having some sort of post-drug-usage-syndrome, but from what I can tell I had far away too many things going on in my life at the same time I was using the drug and after when I quit too. Looking back nowadays no wonder why it took me a while to understand what happened and connect the dots.