Interesting. I too had weird experiences from PDE Inhibitors, so I was doing this search today.
A bit of context:
After PFS, given low quality Erections, I sporadically used both Viagra or Cialis on “special” occasions. What I noted back then was that, while both worked fine for Erections, Viagra specifically made me slightly “numb” in terms of sensitivity, and Cialis for some effing reason IMPROVED my Libido. I thought I was going crazy since everywhere you read that it couldn’t cause that, or that you HAD to have desire for the ED part to work. But both of these were not true in my case, as in the case of Cialis it clearly improved my libido, and given the long half life, also was one of the few 1~3 substances that somewhat restored my Nocturnal/Morning Erections. The slight numbness from Viagra I initially thought was caused by excessively lowered Prolactin or something.
Some time after, I had a really bad reaction to topical Minoxidil, which I had no idea could cause such effects. I had crashes and/or reactions from multiple substances, but the only ones to which I attribute persistent (3+ months) causation or worsening are Finasteride, and Minoxidil (4~5 years later).
What is weird is that I had used Minox close to/during part of my first Finasteride course, and also during a short period 1~2yrs after I already had PFS, and noticed no problems.
Another interesting thing is that in this last bad run of Minoxidil, while afterwards I got worsened symptoms in general, DURING it was mostly a significant genital/libido numbness, accompanied by IMPROVED erection quality and overall “engorged”/larger penis (both erect and flaccid). I used it close to 30 days before I noticed what was causing it.
But in any case, AFTER this minoxidil event, and a few tries, I noticed that Viagra did absolutely NOTHING to my erections, and also worsened my Libido and made me significantly depressed. What is interesting is that somewhere between 12-24h later, I would have a “rebound” effect in which my Libido would magically resurge to great levels (temporarily).
Given the bad experience with Viagra, and that they are of the same type of drug, I didn’t risk taking Cialis after getting numb from Minox, which was ~4 years ago
But the thing is, I’ve been missing a decent quality erection, and given that before the Minox thing I had
different results in terms of sensitivity from Cialis vs Viagra, I was thinking about experimenting with 2.5mg of Cialis today, which is why I was searching and found this thread.
Do you think this is ill-advised?
I also seem to get a similar positive rebound effect the following day from lightly drinking fermented alcoholic beverages, though without the depression during the substance’s effect.
The specification towards “fermented” is because it’s the type of beverage I occasionally drink: beer/mead/wine, enough to be sure of the effect, not because I haven’t noticed from spirits, I think I did, but I only drank it once or twice in all these years. Given that once I had an improvement while taking an antibiotic, the “biotic” distinction of the beverage might be worthy of notice.
One of the aforementioned few other substances that partially restored my absent morning erections was Arimidex, taken pre-minox. I think it slightly worsened my sensitivity, but I’m not entirely sure as it’s been a long time, also seemed to have positive or neutral effects on mood/confidence, despite a mild terminal insomnia.
