Hey all, I was researching the effects of this drug due to issues I was having, and it lead me to this site, figured i’d make an account and tell my story and ask my questions. I hope this is the right way to go about it.
So, about a year ago (march) I began taking finasteride in doses of 1 mg daily, and for the first couple days I had some brain fog/headaches, but my sex drive increased and those effect seemed to wear off, so no biggie. I began a pretty intense new job after the fact and didn’t know much about the medicine at the time, and figured some of the things I was feeling was just being tired from work or something. Unfortunately, when my schedule returned to normal about later in the year I noticed I still felt crappy, tired, depressed, but then a new issue came about. I couldn’t maintain erections well or even get them at times, it impacted both my sex life with my wife to be, and also any masturbation I would attempt. No sex drive at all, very unusual.
I tried taking a couple medications suggested by another to see if they could offset the sides (those being, alchemy which is to help inhibit estrogen, and another medicine to reduce prolactin), and this is where I noticed oddities. The Alchemy in conjunction with Finasteride made me feel foggy for a couple days, but then kind of happier. Unfortunately, when I took the other medicine (labeled caberlogine I think) it caused a bunch of issues to resurface along with some new ones, so I just stopped the latter and continued the Finasteride/Alchemy until I consulted my doctor.
My doctor heavily advised stopping Finasteride after doing some of her own research, and after kind of breaking down that I had to choose between my hair or my health, I decided my health is what I would choose and stopped the medication about 10 days ago. I felt nothing too odd until a few days later, which I felt bad, tired, angry, depressed, still no sex drive at all. However, then something really wonderful happened. It was on Friday, I woke up with an extremely strong morning wood, and again through Saturday, it seemed like anything could cause an erection and I felt energetic and great!
Then I woke up on Sunday and felt tired, sluggish and depressed again, with no sex drive, again, and this has continued on through Monday which also impacted my sleep, this entire ordeal is making me panic. My question to you all is broad, but are these stages normal, if so (or not) could anyone explain what might be happening? What I should expect or do?
My job is pretty difficult as is and I feel my ability to perform there is slipping, I actually just had an interview last Monday that I think I did poorer than I normally would have just due to the stress and feeling of all this. The fact I felt so great only to feel like this again is devastating, it just makes me want to die and it’s a horrible feeling coming from how much I enjoyed my life before.
I’m on the verge of tears here and have no outlet or support for help. I hope the wisdom of the users here can help, and I hope one day I can assist somehow with the suffering others have. It really is just awful all around. It didn’t help that when I read the FAQ here it was stated you should ween off, but having been off over a week already I figured it would be dumb to take another.