Need Propecia Regimen Help - Advice Please

JohnS6512 · Sep 3, 2018

Hi all,

I am in my early twenties and began taking finasteride about three years ago. I took it very consistently (1mg everyday) until about 3 months ago when I realized it had begun to effect my sexual health. I stopped at this point for about 3 weeks and things seemed to go back to normal before I started taking it again. Since then I have been extremely inconsistent in both dose and timelines due to my indecisiveness regarding whether or not I want to stay on the drug. In the last month I have taken inconsistent doses of around 0.33mg. Sexually things have also been inconsistent the last couple of months. I need to make a decision about giving the drug another serious try or stopping altogether. I figure my options are I can either give myself a drug holiday and start again or I can just start taking it consistently again and see what happens sexually. I really am unsure what to do at this point. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

GreekGod · Sep 7, 2018

Truthfully, your hair loss will resume if you completely stop using finasteride. Sexual side effects after three years of taking the drug maybe imaginary. They could be real but you've had the same DHT levels for three years, so why would you get sides now? Sometimes your libido and erection strength decrease for psychological reasons. If you do want to maintain your hair by staying on propecia, make sure you take the same dose daily. What you've been doing actually makes your hormone levels unstable and possibly may have caused the negative feelings you've been having. Your DHT levels should be consistent daily to avoid occurence of sides. All the best.

Retinoid · Sep 7, 2018

Agree with the above poster--libido varies greatly and plenty of people have libido issues without Finasteride (it seems like a guaranteed issue, even for young men).

You can always take .25mg/day and see where that leads you. It is about 75-80% as effective as 1mg.

JohnS6512 · Sep 27, 2018

Sorry if this is long but I have a good bit to address here. First, thanks for the responses guys, I apologize it took me so long to respond. So I was on the drug for approximately 2 years before I noticed possible side effects. Started at 18, noticed I was a little off before I was 21. But, there definitely were not any problems for the first 1.75 years. Also, I read somewhere (I think Donovan Medical, but couldn’t find the article) that the longer you are on the drug the higher your chances are of experiencing side effects. Whether that is true or not I am not sure but it surprised me. I have been off the drug for a few weeks now and am starting to experience significant shedding. I have a doctor’s appointment scheduled and plan to get back on the drug consistently. I agree with GreekGod about the hormones and I am going to talk to my doctor about getting my hormone levels checked. So a little more about my experience I didn’t touch on, I noticed a massive decrease in libido and serious erection problems for several months before my first break. I was also pretty depressed around this time and had some other issues on top of a stressful semester that could have contributed. It took me a long time to attribute any of these sides to finasteride. When I finally did, all the outside issues had pretty much subsided. Eventually, I decided to take a couple of weeks off just to see what would happen and I felt like a new person in all areas of sexual health. I couldn’t remember the last time I had had morning wood, a solid and lasting erection, random erections, etc. So that’s pretty much the back story I should have included in the first post. I’ll update again on what I decide to do and how everything goes. Thanks again.