finasteride
- how long it has been since you quit
2 pills in 2011. 0.25mg once in mid 2017, crashed a couple of days later horrendously and severe persistent problems rapidly developed.
- if your problem is/was rather short term memory, long term memory, or both
Both
- some examples of your memory problems
Lost all memories of my life, who I was, my accumulated knowledge etc extremely fast after crashing. Forgot I had a dog for weeks initially. Could not do simple tasks such as cook (friend looking after me asked me not to after I left the gas on). I would drop things and forget to pick them up. In the first months, my ex partner of ten years (until this) would tell me what we’d done together or what she’d done for me the day before and I could not remember. Equally I would sometimes look at her and not know who she was, before it would slowly dawn on me. I found this deeply alarming and heartbreaking as she means everything to me.
- how you feel it has progressed
A notable improvement from about six months in. Long term memories are patchy and random (I am sometimes surprised by random memories of my life) and memories I know triggered emotions in the past no longer do. Improvements plateaued and both long and short term working memory remain substantially impaired. I do not have constant “access” to my memories anymore.
- how your memory problems impact or have impacted your daily life
I am unable to continue the life I had before due to my finasteride-induced condition, to which this contributes.
- Are you experiencing constant tinnitus in addition to memory problems?
No. I experience random complete dropouts of volume with ringing, and over the next minute or two sound comes back slowly (like in TV/film when a character is near a gunshot or explosion and they filter the high frequencies out and add a ringing, before the higher frequencies are faded back in). I have experienced constant tinnitus/muffled hearing after orgasm which improved over days.