POLL: Did you crash and when?

General Discussion
#1

First of all, I would like to wish everyone as much progress and positive energy as possible in dealing with our Syndrome in the year ahead.

@axolotl and myself have been working hard over the past 2 weeks on finalizing our upcoming community survey and building a really cool analytics system so everyone can see and even analyze the results.

We need to make one final design decision and urgently need feedback regarding your possible “crash”. In our context we define a crash as a noticeable worsening of at least one symptom following cessation of the drug/substance taken. No crash would mean that your symptoms basically remained unchanged after quitting.

What happened after you quit the drug/substance you were taking:

  • crashed within one week
  • crashed within one month
  • crashed within three months
  • crashed after three months
  • did not crash

0 voters

Thanks in advance for taking a second to participate in our poll.

3 Likes
Quitting cold turkey and going on/off
#2
#3

After 7 days, and I had not yet quitting.

#4

what do you mean ?havent quitting ?

#5

Hey @awor I was like @axolotl and felted completely messed up after two days of taking the drug. Would this mean “no crash.” It only got better after stopping (marginally). I did have an explosion of a reaction on the second day, but it was 8 hours after I stopped so I don’t think that’s crash your describing. I stopped because I couldn’t stand up after taking the pill before bed.

#6

@Tonster96 and @holyhead: over three months is not very common. Can you give us some more details about how you felt during time between quitting and your crash? Thanks.

#7

Yes, both Axo and me crashed within hours of quitting. If your symptoms are worse after quitting than while taking, it is a crash, even if separated only by hours.

#8

Do you mean you both crashed within hours of the time when you would have typically taken your daily dose?

#9

Sure. I quit propecia in summer 2014. I had no obvious problems with it back then (in hindsight while taking it from 2004 to 2014 I had probably lower libido than I normally would have had), but read an article about what finasteride actually does hormonewise and that DHT is a super important hormone. Since I wore a shaved haircut anyway in that time I decided to quit it and not play with my hormones anymore. Back then I haven’t been aware of the phenomenon PFS, so i didn’t expect anything to happen and carried on with my life without thinking about fin. And indeed it did nothing happen. So i thought. In fact the symptoms started roling on very very slowly. I remember in summer 2015 having had no stress tolerance at all, no more feelings, no zest for life etc. and couldn’t quite grasp what is going on, thought a depression phase I had many years ago came back, started therapy, although I didn’t know what to talk about. Libido would go slowly down as well, but I didnt really pay attention to that, because I was busy managing my in my experience super stressfull life and job. All this symptoms progressed and in early 2017 i developed ed, numbness, shrinkage and narrowing. But i still couldn’t really grasp it and because of my stressfull mindstate couldnt really realize it and try to make any sense by it. By chance i found an internetsite in March 2017 about pfs. That was the event I would probably call my “crash” (though I don’t think it fits your definition). For weeks I was in constant uncontrollable panic mode, suicide ideas developed, pain in the penis, no sleeping possible at alletc., etc., etc. That was the deepest spot I have ever been in in my life. Since then at least the mental part got relatively better. Does it answer your question?

2 Likes
#11
#12

I never experienced an immediate crash of all symptoms altogether, but rather each symptom got slightly worse one at a time, while the previous synptom would find relief. Extremely bizarre. So for instance the brain fog right when I quit, then brain fog would lift and insomnia came creeping in, insomnia would lift then the next symptom would come and so on.

1 Like
#13

Well I didn’t quit intentionally - I had such an extreme reaction I couldn’t eat yet alone take another pill. It wasn’t like I conciously decided to stop and then boom a few hours later. It’s the other way around. I had an extreme reaction and because of that I decided to stop. Please advise which selection I should make

#14

What if my crash happened years after cessation?

#15

Ok, thanks to everyone who participated so far. Your participation and feedback was great, and helped Axo and me to finalize the study design, and improve it. To date, none of the “PFS” publications have mentioned the crash, despite it being a key aspect of our syndrome. We recently discussed this with a scientist, who acknowledged that a description of the crash in a publication is way overdue. With the upcoming survey, we are hoping to produce some interesting pilot data which, among other things, will support such a future publication.

Even though we got what we wanted out of this topic, please feel free to continue with the poll and discussing the crash.

3 Likes
#16

I was sure it was testosterone dropping…It is not. In fact hormones levels do not move much…so what is the “crash”? The only thing that moves
Is Dht lowers, then returns. Other hormones are not a affected…Everyone talks about this hormone problem but as I can tell there is nothing different than before…

As far as the time it took about 4 months the first time stopping for me to return to normal and massive hair shed…The second time after 4 months I began developing strange symptoms of tissues changing, weight increasing with no diet change…Hair and skin changes, energy dropping and inability to exercise and run as before which has worsened till this day…All while the suicidal ideation grew and grew, my head felt as if it would blow off…Driving to work would cause me such anguish I wanted to pull over and beat the hell outta somebody…

#17

personally i think a crash after 3 months is highly unlikely. but im wondering why some people dont crash but have pfs? maybe they crashed too but on the drug and then stopped and nothing changed. in my opinion the theory you and mew had in 2010 is the best till now. dht comes back but receptors cant handle it —-> autoregulation

#18

wow this is exactly me. I got pfs like symptoms (genital numbness, tight scrotum, no libido/no morning /spontatenous erection, low semen volume force, no armpit sweat/genital sweat. Only thing that would cause this during that time was a severe crash diet (vegetables mainly) Diet started from june 2016-december 2016. Began having no stress tolerance/feelings as well not grasping what was going on. Didn’t know wwhat to tell people what was my problem. Eventually also lead to ED, Genital numbness , tight scrotum, loss of morning/spontaenous erections and libido. I also dont feel orgasm/ejaculation anymore…

1 Like
#19

I had an initial crash within a month of quitting, however I had a far more intense crash after that within the three month period. The second crash felt so much worse and placed me in a far worse state. Some fluctuation took place with symptoms over time and I even thought I could be “recovering” at points but it was always short lived and that no longer seems to happen. Just a very lowly and awful baseline.

The “crash” is an absolutely terrifying experience.

#20

id day hours after an arimidex dose things became different, a way i never felt before.

#21

I crashed with the first pill of Finasteride when I resumed taking it after having been off it for 6 months after having taken it for 8 years.