Suicide

General Discussion
#6

I sure hope you’re still around neo, but it doesn’t look good. I’m sitting here writing, with a really bad feeling. I’m not sure how to respond. I have some questions. I know everyone who register on this board and post, will have to wait for approval - which means that an admin or moderator has approved that post. Are you really going to just sit back and do nothing? It looks like he’s determined to off himself, and that’s alright?? At least fucking call the police next time! I often see talk about suicide, but not like that. It’s a tragedy, and fucking waste if he’s gone. Our lives has been ruined by a drug that’s still on the market, and silently committing suicide is not going to a damn thing about it.

A crisis/positive support network is needed, and we need to know if anyone has tipped over the edge and committed suicide. Every case should be investigated and documented. I suggest that the PFS foundation gets involved. Everyone with the PFS should register, and verify that they’re alive at least once a year. Anyone who doesn’t do that, should be contacted. Contact information for someone who’s close to that person should also be provided, in case they can’t get hold of the person. Further, progress should be reported, so we can get some statistics on recovery. Also, there should be a memorial section for those who couldn’t take it anymore. I would gladly pay a fee once a year for that.

1 Like
#7

Ah good, he’s still here.

Neo, don’t do it! We’re all having that thought, but this isn’t what you really want - just like the rest of us. Have you tried any treatments? I see you’re registered over at SolvePFS.

#8

I was in the same exact place, as many of us were. It ruined my life terribly, and I went through all sorts of hell because of it. But I urge you to hold out at least till the 2 year mark. The depression and mental sides will ease back considerably by that time. The brain needs those years to adapt itself to the biochemical changes that took place, eventually dealing with PFS can become easier if you can hold out long enough to give the mind time to adapt.

I encourage you to quit work if you can, file for disability, or welfare if you have to destress yourself and move in with someone who is at least somewhat caring while you try to rest and recover.

PS when I say recover I mean acclimate your brain and body to the condition to the extent that is possible.

#9

I really hope he did not suicide. I am sure several did on the forum without us knowing. Wish there was a way to confirm. The media would definitely react if they knew someone kills himself out of a prescription drug (that is being pushed to younger and younger patients)…

#10

Check the New York City obits for 34 year old men…

#11

I came across this PFS podcast the other day it certainly helps listening to others. It’s amazing how a drug company can carelessly hurt people with it’s drugs but if you or I did the same, Obama would be on his White House podium wagging his finger and calling us terrorists. There was a guy on one of the podcasts who talked about Merck, he mentioned that the 15,000 who suffered heart attacks from one of their shitty drugs only received $5K each in compensation. If that’s true then it’s no wonder this is happening, what sort of deterrent is $5k to a billion dollar company. As long as we have Starbucks, McDonalds and Reality TV people will just sit on their backsides en masse and say nothing, why the minorities get taken for a ride. We have a chance to get out of this mess and that’s by donating to The Foundation and not taking it for granted. Having Dr’s on our side fighting our corner is powerful stuff; we must ensure that they have the money to do what’s necessary. We are very fortunate to have a world-class institution such as Harvard who take us seriously and are researching our condition. We will get answers and as a group we are smart enough to make good use of the information.

blogtalkradio.com/pfsglobal

#12

I’m begging you, if you’re still here, please let me call you

I will do all I can to help you and I mean that 100%

#13

Thankfuily this poster visited this site only 1 day ago

Glad your still with us buddy

#14

Hang on, buddy! We need to stay alive in order to punish merck for what they did! Also to rise awarness for other people not to do the same thing.

#15

This is all because of women we need to look good to attract opposite sex because she’s being a bitch she lost her way of being a lady.

I’m almost near my breaking point also it will be three years and I think many more to come until the trap closes.

You see all these bitches in the clubs in the bars but that the end of the night they go home alone at least most of them all they need to do is say no I will not fuck you just because you bought me some drinks or show me the kindness. If you’re like me and you want to have sex with me we have to get married and we will not get a divorce until the end of time.

Then and only then Propecia will lose the battle read this and think about it

#16

I think you are pretty delusional. Women are not responsible for what has happened to us, Merck is.

#17

Oh yeah I forgot I was trying to look good for Mark so Merk can give me some pussy.

Your part of the problem why we are like this because you don’t understand what most of these guys do most of these guys want hair on their head so they can look good and look attractive to who to A pill maker.

If you commit suicide donate your body to Pfs foundation.

#18

I think two people are to blame for this mess, ourselves and Merck. Our insecurities have lead us here and we’ve paid the price

#19

We all share blame in this, but it has taken me months of self loathing to realize that nobody here did anything wrong. My doctor pointed out my thinning hair and offered what was a safe solution to prevent it. I actually went in to the visit for other reasons. Smarter folks would have declined the drug, but I don’t think anyone on here was wrong or labeled overly vain for accepting it. We have docs and prescription drugs for a reason. They exist to help us make the correct medical decisions. We all were failed by a system that encourages the use of pharmaceuticals, in this case for non necessary reasons by people who are supposed to help us make sound heatlth choices. I was 23 at the time. My first adult appointment and my inexperience burned me. If our doctors even cared, they would have reminded us of the potential for side effects and questioned the use of a drug for such a reason, even if they assumed it was safe. If only we had all met a homeopathic doctor prior to this, all would have been saved. So yes us to blame, but this system happily pounced on our ignorance of medicine and the recommendation of our docs to make ourselves better. There is the cruelty in all this. Going to a doctor should be like taking a friend to the car dealer who has experience buying cars. Helps you see things you don’t see. In medicine now it’s like you want this fucking lemon, fine by me. Hopefully thousands of men were spared by docs who were conservative and talked them out of it. Us, not so.

#20

I think Soccerguy is right. It serves no purpose blaming yourself. Would you blame yourself for any other purchase which had been deemed safe and failed you? There is nothing wrong with wanting to look your best and wanting to keep your hair. There is something wrong however with exploiting that fact with absolutely no regard to ensuring the safety of the product and the welfare of the customer i.e. Merck. All we can hope is that the collective weight of evidence will tip the balance to such an extent that in the future the blinkers will be off for men still to lose their hair or consider medication for hair loss. The conventional wisdom by then will hopefully be that it is indeed poison and that Merck are indeed criminals hiding behind lawyers.

#21

It is a complex thing. The point is, that this drug was marketed as being safe… it was promoted and sold to young men under the guise of being safe. That was Merck’s doing. Many men, especially young men do not want to go bald, for their own looks and for how they think others might judge them. Really it doesn’t matter much but its hard telling that to a 18-35 year old.

Doctors prescribing it only knew (although NOW most of them should be aware of the more harmful side effects) what their taught in med school, what the PDR says, and what big pharma reps tell them… which is obviously going to biased. So its hard to blame them either.

I don’t blame myself anymore, I never really did though I was upset at myself for not doing more research. Some guys do blame themselves a lot, but we all only know what we can learn for ourselves and we were all taught to trust medical authority. I don’t blame my doctor much but I do think he should have been more aware, however there are many, many drugs out there and knowing the obscure side effects of all of them is almost impossible for a general practitioner.

I don’t really blame all women either, like the previous poster implied.

I do think that most of the blame for this situation rests on the company Merck, and the governments who allowed this drug to be sold without more testing. Though Merck especially since even now with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, they continue to deny aggressively that their drug could possibly cause these side effects; they do this in the face of a number of suicides and many various personal accounts of suffering. And for that, not only are they civilly responsible for it, but also criminally responsible in my opinion because of their blatant and callous disregard for human suffering. All the while they are suppose to be a company helping people with medical problems not harming them.

#22

I mean hats off to Merck on this one. Really, they invented the perfect poison, and put us in a position where most people would be easily fooled. I trusted my doctor as many do, and actually today, I finally spoke to her about that fateful day ten years ago when she first prescribed me propecia. I was so young, so the red flags weren’t evident to me. So I asked her about those flags and why they weren’t evident to her.

She told me then that once I stopped taking the drug, the benefits would go away. I assume many of your docs told you the exact same thing. Great ploy on Merck’s part. Really genius. I cared less about taking drugs, but it created incentive to keep taking it. She told me 1% got the sexual sides, but those disappeared after stopping. I remembered that over the years, and never got any noticeable sides at all till I finally crashed, so all seemed as she had suggested. I asked her why she wouldn’t question that aspect of a drug or remind me whether I really wanted to put a chemical in my body for the forseeable future, but said it made perfect sense. I told her I had no idea propecia was a smaller dose of the drug they use for prostate cancer, and why she wouldn’t have questioned why that was safe or healthy for a young man. She said some drugs cause unintended side effects, and that was a benefit they were finding from men who took proscar. So that made perfect sense to her too. I asked her whether it made sense having a drug that interfered with testosterone. She said is all sound legit. Docs believe in drugs, and we can blame ourselves all we want, but when a doc gives you no reason not to take a drug, it makes the decision making skewed and difficult. Hindsight always 20/20, but you wonder why any doctor would think it good. FDA approves, so good enough for them. And when we spoke today, she said she looked in the “literature” and could not find anything really damning about finasteride. I was like WTF? So I politely ripped her a new one, but that does little to help my neurotoxic suffering and my 90 year old body.

#23

The newer PDR’s should contain the warnings about persistent side sexual side effects and depression at the least, because the FDA required the changes.

#24

Yes even the current PDR shows propecia as being safe. For all of us, its one of those tough lessons that I constantly remind myself, “where was this lesson not learned” along the way. I work at a hospital, and when I first crashed and didn’t realize why, I saw eight different doctors of different specialties. And I got eight different prescriptions. Not one reminded me of the danger of side effects or inspired me to research the drug they were prescribing. It was like this will make you better, and that was that. No warnings from a single doctor that one in five trillion people will get life altering disease from it.

So after we all got sick and started putting in the real work investigating our healthcare system, we realized that while most doctors do a good job healing, the system allows for injury without much warning to patients of its existence. I agree with BP that no doctor should know about the side effects of every medication they prescribe. But if only they acknowledged that they don’t know all the potential side effects and to inspire us to research anything before putting in our bodies. I mean nobody would ever have imagined that a drug for hair would destroy us so thoroughly.

#25

Unlike other medications however, this was a cosmetic intervention. All medications have side effects and it is about striking a balance between benefit/risk. It is almost laughable if it weren’t so tragic that the system allowed a medication for hairloss to be approved where the benefit of keeping your hair apparently outweighed the risk to your health. This breach in care by so many shouldn’t be underplayed as it is an outrageous act by those sanctioned by our governments.