punchnugget story

Member Stories
#1

  1. How did you find this forum? google

  2. What is your current age, height, weight? 34, 6’ 3"

  3. Do you excercise regularly? If so, what type of excercise? Yes-- team sports 2 x per week

  4. What type of diet do you eat (vegetarian, meat eater, raw, fast-food/organic healthy)? meat eater

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

  6. For how long did you take Finasteride (weeks/months/years)? about 2 years plus some time using it topically.

  7. How old were you when you started Finasteride? about 27

  8. How old were you when you quit? about 30

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

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

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

Started taking full doses 1/day. Started to taper doses once side effects were noticed, down to one dose per week, then moved to the topical, then went to a less concentrated topical (1 pill in 80 mL, so 1/80 pill per dose), then used that just once per week.

  1. How long into your use of Finasteride did you notice the onset of side effects?

It was pretty quick, but I was not sexually active so it didn’t really hit home what was happening.

  1. What side effects did you experience while on the drug that have yet to resolve since discontinuation? (most problems resolved after discontinuation)

Put an X beside all that apply:

Sexual
[ ] Loss of Libido / Sex Drive
[ ] Erectile Dysfunction
[ ] Complete Impotence
[ ] Loss of Morning Erections
[ ] Loss of Spontaneous Erections
[ ] Loss of Nocturnal Erections
[ ] Watery Ejaculate
[ ] Reduced Ejaculate
[ ] Inability to Ejaculate / Orgasm
[ ] Reduced Sperm Count / Motility

Mental
[ ] Emotional Blunting / Emotionally Flat
[ ] Difficulty Focusing / Concentrating
[ ] Confusion
[ ] Memory Loss / Forgetfullness
[ ] Stumbling over Words / Losing Train of Thought
[ ] Slurring of Speech
[ ] Lack of Motivation / Feeling Passive / Complacency
[ ] Extreme Anxiety / Panic Attacks
[ ] Depression / Melancholy

Physical
[ ] Penile Tissue Changes (narrowing, shrinkage, wrinkled)
[ ] Penis curvature / rotation on axis
[ ] Testicular Pain
[ ] Testicular Shrinkage / Loss of Fullness
[ ] Genital numbness / sensitivity decrease
[ ] Weight Gain
[ ] Gynecomastia (male breasts)
[ ] Muscle Wastage
[ ] Muscle Weakness
[ ] Joint Pain
[x ] Dry / Dark Circles under eyes

Misc
[ ] Prostate pain
[ ] Persistent Fatigue / Exhaustion
[ ] Stomach Pains / Digestion Problems
[ ] Constipation / “Poo Pellets”
[ ] Vision - Acuity Decrease / Blurriness
[ ] Increased hair loss
[ ] 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-- just discontinued it.

  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)? None

  3. Anything not listed in the above questions you’d like to share about your experience with Finasteride?

  4. Tell us your story, in your own words, about your Finasteride usage and side effects experienced while on/off the drug.

I started using the drug after discovering that my hair was rapidly thinning. It immediately worked and grew my hair back extremely thick. I noticed erection problems, watery ejaculate, and mood changes (I became bitchy and unmotivated). Also I was masturbating excessively. For a while I thought the problems were due to getting older. I started to worry when I realized that I hadn’t had a morning erection in a long time, then I realized that I also don’t recall getting them at night either… I somehow knew that I didn’t even get them in my sleep. My penis skin was papery and my testicles started moving around a lot and feeling like they were dead. I started tapering off the drug and moved to a topical solution. During the recovery, I experience mood swings, depression when the exogenous hormone was removed, before my testicles reactivated. Finally, many months later (6+, I can’t remember), I recovered. It was delayed by continuing to use topical doses for a couple years. After stopping all doses, I was able to regain my erections and semen quality back to almost as good as before (of course I was in my 30’s now). I had a child with my wife after a year of no doses of drug.

I just recently tried 3 topical 1/80 mg doses spread out over 3 weeks, but I immediately noticed all those side effects recurring. Amazing how effective it is, and cumulative. I have stopped it realizing there is just no way to get around the effects. I will have to go bald.

I have done a lot of reading on the biology of this drug. Testosterone is the messenger hormone that converts to DHT at the target tissue, where it has very local effects. Fin prevents this conversion, but Fin cannot be targeted locally at this time-- once it is in the bloodstream it moves all over the body and inhibits 5ar enzymes everywhere. DHT is more powerful than T in it’s effects on target tissues. If you remove DHT, it has different effects on different tissues… in the face it reduces sebum production and therefore acne. In the genitals it involutes the spermatogenesis structures and affects the skin tone, interrupts nerve signaling between the brain and penis, and prevents the “testosterone burning” stage of an erection (the stage after the initial 15-60 seconds of erection is maintained by DHT). In scalp, it prevents DHT from forming and turning off the hair follicle’s growth. If you take the drug long enough or are unlucky enough for it to get in your brain into the hypothalamus, you may experience lasting effects to your HPT axis. Luckily I didn’t have that kind of problem, at least not that I could prove.

If you read the Merck study carefully, you’ll find out why only 2% reported sexual side-effects. They allowed people to drop out for months and months, then asked whoever was LEFT, what side effects do you have? Of course by that time they had selected for people who were clueless or didn’t care what was happening to them. That explains the wild disconnect between the study results and reality. The drug does cure baldness for most people who try it, but it had sales of only 300 million or so at it’s peak. What does that tell you about the opinion of the vast majority of men who have tried it? If it worked with 2% side effects, it would sell 10 billion dollars or more a year.

Also there is some fun reading out there but I have trouble finding it now… some Merck researchers working with some Koreans I believe did a study on the investigational precursor to Fin, where they measured rat’s spontaneous erections while on the drug. It was hilarious… it just killed all spontaneous erections for those poor rats. So Merck knows all about the biology of this, for sure.