Ozezh，how do you feeling now？
I’m feeling much better. I still need to take meds and herbs for sleeping, but I manage to sleep quite good. I still wake up after 5-6 hours and turn and toss in my bed for another 3 hours, but I have lots of sleep in those 3 hours and have many dreams. When I get up, I feel rested and have a normal day although sometimes I’m a bit foggy.
It still happens 1-2 times a month that I have a bad night and I feel brain fog the next day.
I can live what looks like a normal life, except I’m still on the ketogenic diet and I eat only once a day.
All other symptoms are gone. Sexuality is normal, strength and energy is normal, I do body building and I’ve never been in better shape. Mentally, I can concentrate and last IQ test I passed, I got 10 points more than the last one, when I was much younger.
I’m not cure. I don’t even know if I can stop the diet, and I’m pretty sure if I stop the sleeping meds I won’t sleep and won’t be able to work. But I live as much of a normal life as I could wish for, considering how bad this disease can be.
There is still progress, little by little, but it’s much slower now. Still, I believe in 2-3 years I will be very close to normal. I’m always optimistic !
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It sounds good. You are gradually recovering. As long as you can have sex and work, life is not too bad. I can erect slowly, but my brain fog makes me crazy. Damn, it has been nearly three months. It makes me make a fool of myself at work
Yes. I know. I also didn’t look good in the first few months. Whatever, we have to keep going !
Self-reporting form Do not read, I’m just copying it here for convenience.
- Name of the therapy/substance: _____
- Dosage: ___
- How often you took it: ____
- Status
- Still using [ ]
- Stopped with no lasting change to initial symptoms [ ]
- Stopped with persistent change to symptoms [ ]
- Duration of use: Days [ ] Months [ ] Years [ ]
- Response when you started:
- Greatly improved [ ]
- Slightly improved [ ]
- Stayed the same [ ]
- Slightly worsened [ ]
- Greatly worsened [ ]
- Current response (if you’re still using) OR Response in the time before you stopped the treatment
- Greatly improved [ ]
- Slightly improved [ ]
- Stayed the same [ ]
- Slightly worsened [ ]
- Greatly worsened [ ]
- Lasting changes to initial symptoms after cessation (if you have stopped for more than 3 weeks)
- Greatly improved [ ]
- Slightly improved [ ]
- Stayed the same [ ]
- Slightly worsened [ ]
- Greatly worsened [ ]
14 months ago I made the post bellow. It was pretty good back then but there was quite a few changes since.
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Hey @Ozeph - when did your mental sides begin to clear up? Tried going through your post, and you had an unfortunate myriad of symptoms, but did you suffer from the foggy disconnect? Resolved by diet?
Yes indeed it did. 6 months ago I would have a few bad days a month when I had bad sleep but now it’s pretty much all good days.
To be more specific, emotions and pleasure came back. I’m focused, motivated and have good morale.
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How would you say is your libido and erections compared to pre fin?
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Pre fin, I was 31 yo and I had raging libido. Now I’m 54.
Erections are the same but libido is lower. Is it PFS or age ? IDK but I have more libido than my friends of the same age.
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I wish to say, for the record, that you served as a light of hope for me in my darkest days. Many thanks for the inspiration!
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You’re welcome and thank you for saying it. I’m happy to make a difference, it brings out some good out of this whole ordeal.
There’s reason for hope. I’ve been in contact with lots of people who has gotten better and can now live pretty normal lives. We don’t hear much from them as most just wish to move on but they’re out there, having a life past this disease.
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Ozeph, I will second what Taw has said. I could always count on you for advice when I was at my worst. You helped me through it and now I consider myself among the recovered along with you. Thank you.
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Thank you for saying that. It means a lot. I’m really happy you went through it and can now live a normal life.
I wish all of us here to have that. I think it’s possible. I’m not posting a lot but I’m working on something.
Lol… And it won’t be to make money. I already have what I need. I just want to help.
I too was desperate, anxious, insomniac, depressed, suicidal to name just a few… I hanged to a thread. It’s the hope of something better yet to come that kept me going. I wanted to share that hope because it saves lives, and because there is cause for hope !
If all those who recovered to a great extent and can live normal lives would post it like you did, people would know this disease is not automatically a life sentence.
Thank you again for posting. By doing this, you give hope to others and it’s important !
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I’m at 5 1/2 years after crashing. At 4 1/2 years, I was starting to sleep much better and started to tapper sleeping meds. However, sex drive and sensitivity was still low and I was lacking motivation and initiative to start projects, visit places etc… That’s not normal for me, I’ve always been ambitious and eager to explore and discover new things.
I could see my body was stabilizing, but with too much PFS left overs for my taste. I started a T boosting therapy with my doctor. Sleep, sex drive and sensitivity became worst at first, then came back to where it was before but with my total T at 1207 whereas the average is 600 and maximum normal range is 972.
My voice got deeper, I get muscles more easily, more body hair and beard is growing faster and stronger. Mood wise, I’m more calm and confident, less reactive or irritable from events in my life and my emotions are leveled. I seem to be happy, I’m often singing or playing songs in my head. This was once all gone from my life so I really appreciate feeling it back.
I’m now getting used to higher T. Sleep, sex drive and sensitivity are getting better. Motivation and initiative is also coming back. I’m further tapering sleep meds. I wanted to test the theory that if an androgen deprivation therapy (fin) made my AR over-expressed, an androgen supplementation therapy, to higher than normal T, would make the AR less expressed, less sensitive. It is really just a theory.
I kept eating a keto / carnivore one meal a day diet which, according to what I read is supposed to make the epigenome more flexible, more reactive to changes. I’ve been on it for over 5 years. I believe it helped but I’ll never know for sure.
I would not have done an androgen therapy in the first few years when I was in bad shape and I don’t recommend anyone to try this, especially severe cases. It’s almost certain to make people more sick but not certain they’ll get better afterward.
I will soon stop most androgen boosting supplements, I expect my androgen to drop lower and into the normal range and I want to see if I managed to lower AR expression to a level consistent with normal androgen levels. If I did, I believe sleep, sex drive, sensitivity and motivation would be closer to what it was before I got sick.
I’ll post again about this. So far so good but I’m still in the process.
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Much better, Thanks for asking.
The androgen supplementation therapy did work. Sex drive is high and sensitivity is back to normal, anhedonia is gone and motivation going back to normal.
I’m now detoxing from clonazepam. I didn’t have insomnia or anxiety so far and I’m 50% into the detox. I believe the 50% left is why I still don’t have full motivation. Benzodiazepines are zombifiers !
I think some 6 months from now, I’ll be drug free with no more traces of PFS.
I will detail my journey once it’s a confirmed recovery.
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An inspiration, an oracle, the wisest of champions, ….it’s such a pleasure to read that you’re doing well. Without your support and encouragement on here, I couldn’t have got through.
Even reading your progress 5 1/2 years later is a serious boost, keep going and keep believing that you will feel better! Looking forward to hearing your updates, as always 
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It’s been a long time since my last post so I thought I’d write something.
I was tapering clonazepam but I had reached the limit where PFS insomnia started acting up again and I couldn’t sleep so I had to pause the tapering. It gave me some time to experiment with some new meds and supplements, most of which without success. But I did found something that worked for me: Butea Superba extracts, 500mg.
It’s a plant from South East Asia that boosts DHT. At first, it did nothing but I’ve heard someone claiming it boosts 5ar (unconfirmed) so I kept taking it just in case. Then one day I noticed the clonazepam started hitting me stronger. I also noticed if I took Butea in the morning, my brain was basically off during the day with absolute zero anxiety and not much wit or desire to talk, just feeling sleepy and taking naps in the afternoon. I though it could be too much GABA so I decided to take it in the evening and then before bed. It increased the benzos effects (or increased my own natural GABA, IDK) and enabled me to slowly cut down benzos another 50% as I kept tapering down. No anxiety, no insomnia.
Other things became stronger in my life: my motivation, my general happiness, my taste for adventure and yes, more sex drive and sensitivity and fully felt orgasms. I like hanging out with my friends and fooling around, making jokes and just having fun like before. In my opinion, it’s 5ar rebooting my Allopregnanolone and other brain chemicals although I don’t really know. I know last time I stopped this plant, a couple of months ago, life became more dull and I was demotivated so I started taking it again and I’m still slowly tapering the benzos.
It will be 7 years in 2 months since I crashed. At this point, this disease is not affecting much anything in my life. Sometimes I have an off day with a bit of brainfog but it’s hard to know if it’s PFS or benzos. It doesn’t stop me though.
Anyway I just wanted to post an update, let you know guys that I’m still well and alive and that PFS did not come back in any major ways.
There is hope. All the best to you guys !
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Hey man - your consistency throughout all of this is a complete inspiration. We crashed around the same time…. But I haven’t made the same progress you have. Do you mind sharing your T boosting protocol?