Wellbutrin recovery?

Therapeutic Efforts Pharmaceutical
#1

Hey guys,

some of you may remember me, a couple years ago I posted about my recovery from post-fin syndrome. My recovery was achieved via synthroid and viagra. For 2 years, I’ve been off both drugs and felt relatively good.

LAt summer, however, I was feeling very fatigued and my libido was low as well. I went to the doctor, who took some blood tests. I had a high TSH (3.7), and he suggested I try synthroid again. I went on it at 50mg, and felt a boost of sexual energy for a week, but then it wore off. Went up to 75 mg and the same thing happened. Sexual and energy boost for a week, then it sort of evened out. I decided to continue, assuming I was hypothyroid and that the synthroid was helping me. Maybe it did, a little bit. BUT, what I noticed was that once I was on the synthroid for several months, I felt like I had lost some sensitivity in my penis, and my libido was maybe slightly worse than before I started the synthroid. I’m no doctor and all I can do is speculate, but what I think happened was the synthroid raised all of my hormone levels, including SHBG, which sucked up enough free testosterone to give me a numbing effect in my penis.

Not to dog too much on synthroid; I still believe that initally, it was instrumental in my recovery and that it works well for some folks.

I talked to my doc who suggested I had symptoms of general depression, which I agreed with (lack of lust for life, lack of energy, etc). He also said he’d had experience treating PFS patients with some success in the past with a combination of synthroid and wellbutrin. He said if the wellbutrin was working (which would take 6 weeks to determine) to stop taking it but continue the WB.

So, I kept on the synthroid and added WB. the WB made me feel like I was on crack for the first few days, I had a strange surge of sexual energy, which then went away, and some mild stomach pain. At about week 4, I stopped taking the synthroid, but continued with the WB.

It’s been 3 months now since I’ve been on WB. I have more energy than before, more lust for life, and a HUGE libido. It’s almost surreal because 4 months ago, the thought of sex did nothing for me. I was able to perform, but it always felt forced and lackluster. Now my girlfriend and I are having sex every day, I wake up often (~5 days a week) with morning wood, and I feel that intense primal libido urge to get off a few times a day.

It’s only been a few months and I’m keeping an eye on how I feel day to day, but so far things are good. This upsurge of libido and energy convinces me that this problem is dopamine based and related to nuerosteroids.

Anyways, if any of you folks haven’t tried wellbutrin – or tried it and went off because of other side effects – I’d say it might worth another go. The worst side for me was stomach pain, which dissapeared once I began taking the pill with food.

btw, my current regime is as follows:

– 150 MG of Welbutrin daily
– 1000 MG fish oil
– 50 MG chelated zinc

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#2

would you mind taking some tests especially free (saliva cortisol) and blood cortisol? I want to know if WB have affected cortisol level.I know taking tests are annoying but think if we find a clue maybe we can come up with even more effective way of treatment.

#3

Gonna resume my Wellbutrin after reading this post.

#4

I dont know. At this point im pretty liberal in things im willing to try. Except trt that really set me back.

#5

I’m also taking Wellbutrin. It did not have an great impact on my libido but reduced symptoms of depression and fatigue a lot.
Which does not mean that I’m feeling well now. But a lot better than really, really, really bad.

#6

Can you update us on your experience with Wellbutrin? Can you also tell me the dose you were taking? Thanks!

#7

Anyone has used?

#8

I’ve been taking 150 mg Wellbutrin since June 2018. Definitely has made me much less suicidal and sometimes I look at a girl and see a “hot girl” rather than a seeing a “tree” like before. No huge impact on libido though or even motivation but probably a small impact.

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#9

Glad to hear That.
I Googled it,but no results there in Japanese.
Please explain to me briefly?

#10

Bit late but why not, I’ve read an article that mentioned sleep deprivation can cause an increase in 5 AR conversion, so besides the direct dopamine increases, it’s possible that the stimulated state the body is in, minimizes the bodys amount to rest and increases 5AR, increasing DHT.

Caffeine is also a stimulant known to cause 5 AR upregulation, so it woulnd’t be too far fetched to say that Wellbutrin may cause it too.

When I was on Ritalin tablets myself a long time ago (>7 years), it was the moment I noticed my hairloss started, and it was as if Ritalin had set it off. I was losing hair pretty rapidly, indicating the skin was receiving more DHT then it did before. It was also the reason I went of it pretty quickly. (It was in the male pattern, because I didn’t lose anything on the sides or back of my head, it was on the top of my head, more in the front of the scalp.)

Ritalin is just hard to procure unfortunately.

Case studies of methylphenidate causing hair loss

#11

The reason why sleep deprivation, sprints and caffeine increase 5AR is due to them being stressors.

5AR is upregulated to cope with that stress. Most 5AR metabolites are anti stress and pro feel good.

It’s possible we don’t have that mechanism anymore and that is one of the reasons why we don’t cope with stress anymore.

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#13

I do feel caffeine. So that’s good. I also don’t bother stress, I need it.

The thing caffeine doesn’t do is give my physical energy, but that has to do with the mind body disconnect I believe, which is potentially irreversible.

“Observations based on a recent questionnaire-based survey performed in 54 PFS patients have been also published (Giatti et al., 2018). As shown, 22% of patients reported lack of connection between the brain and penis during treatment, and this percentage increased to 59% at interview time (i.e., at least three months after finasteride discontinuation). This side effect was not reported by the patients before the finasteride treatment.” From: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235228951930061X

The study which Melcangi (1) has done showed that PFS sufferers in the study still had 50% or so of the 5AR promotor gene unmethylated (on average) so that means half of the 5ar promotor enzyme is still there. That might be the reason while I’m feeling tons better while using Hydrocortison as well (increasing cortisol, ergo stress, ergo 5ar). I’m like twice as sharp mentally as I was before.

Also from the people that have posted bloodwork (@joao_brazil, 401) it seems the 5AR is still there, because DHT is still available in their blood. It might be either too high SHBG taking almost all if not all DHT for itself, leaving it unable to bind to androgen receptors, or, some form of partial or mild androgen receptors insensitivity causing the remaining androgens to have less of an effect.

1 https://ec.bioscientifica.com/view/journals/ec/8/8/EC-19-0199.xml

EDIT: @Northern_Star I’m trying to highlight that Wellbutrin might made him feel good possibly by getting 5AR up. Just hoping to be able to connect links that may help us further.

#14

This is an old Wellbutrin thread. I don’t see a good reason to go on a tangent about 5ar. There are plenty of threads dedicated to this issue already.

#15

You’re reading it wrong. Half the PFS patients did have a fully unmethylated 5AR promoter. Still had the same issues.

Also you can clearly see how the amount of 5AR methylation doesn’t correlate with 5AR metabolites.

The unmethylated group has lower 5AR metabolites than the methylated group. On average the methylated group even have higher DHT than the control for example. But this group also have highly variable levels, where the unmethylated and control group has less spread.

Serum and CSF levels doesn’t have any correlation either.

When it comes to blood DHT it doesn’t really matter either. And why is that?

Because the blood DHT is mainly from the liver, it doesn’t say much about the 5AR activity in other tissues, like the penis.

The SHBG theory has also been busted several times. Not everyone have high SHBG to begin with (mine’s 22 for reference). And the ones who have high SHBG rarely get help when they force it down with lifestyle or pharmacology.

Now we don’t know exactly if the 5AR inside the cells are fully functioning since I don’t believe any studie actually have looked into it.

There’s a test to measure the 5AR activity by cultivating fibroblasts from the foreskin, used to diagnose AIS. But I don’t think anyone here has had it done.

And if we had AIS we should feel better with higher androgens, but it’s not the case for most PFS patients either.

That’s why the mods are focusing on the AR overexpression theory as of now.

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#16

Sorry your right I must havr misinterpreted this. I haven’t seen the SHBG theory busted yet. Though I’m still pretty new here.

I know @JustQuitDut did have success with his protocol, at least he said so, and so have some others. But I he did say that his skin still isn’t oily, and his hair isn’t falling out, indication that the receptors in his skin aren’t responding to androgen’s. So it could have something to do with androgen insensitivity, or overstimulation.

Could you dm me so we can talk this further? I can’t send dms because I’m new, and I’m not supposed to go off topic here. Please send me a message if you’re willing to.

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#17

I’ve been taking Wellbutrin, 300xl, for a bit longer than a year or so now. It’s really really helped my sleep and my mood, but hardly anything else that’s noticeable. I’ve had a couple of 60 day trials on it before, and while the improvements came slowly, I’m grateful they came for me. I did slowly tapper off of it, and felt the depression coming back. I did have a couple of morning erections when I started Wellbutrin, but they were few and inconsistent, and may have been related to something else.

I would like to get off of it at sometime soon, but for now, I don’t see much downside to staying on.

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#18

Man, good to read, hows the energy? Did anything regarding assertiveness change for you, did it have any influence? And what about masculinity?

Because the mental part could be a big part of the total syndrome, while sex drive could be more related to hormone levels and 5ar.

These are just symptoms and don’t treat the potential core problem of brain changes, gene expression or epigenetics aka methylation, but if you can treat most of the symptoms with you’re almost there.

I’m currently evaluating whether to get on it soon myself.