Diffuser44
Banned
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Long-term reader, first time poster.
I started finasteride in 2003 soon after my 18th birthday. When asking my doctor for hair loss cures he gave me two options. Propecia or Rogaine. He said both will help you keep the hair you have. I opted for propecia since it seemed a lot simpler to just take a pill then to apply liquid. I never really paid too much attention to side effects mainly because the odds were in my favor. There was a reported 1% chance I would have any side effects and I had a near 80% chance of success of growing or keeping my hair. The pill worked. My hair did this weird shedding thing for a while and my hair curled up on the top for a while. I would say after 3 - 6 months my hair started to look normal again and stopped curling. It would continue to shed periodically for about 1.5 years before it got to its full strength.
I eventually had switched off my insurance and started buying it online. Then I started getting paranoid about whether it was really finasteride I was taking. On top of that I started hearing stories of post finasteride syndrome. I wanted to donate blood, and found out you couldn't if you were taking the drug. With all of PFS news, and not even knowing if I was even taking the drug I decided to quit so that I could donate blood.
This is where things get interesting. A couple weeks off the drug I felt a change in personality. I also started getting really strong morning wood that would actually stick around for 5 + minutes. That and when I did get erections they didn't go soft right away like what I had been used to. Somewhere during the 7.5 years of taking the drug I must have slowly forgot what it was like to have normal erections, and simply thought I was fine.
I never had noticable hairloss, but could tell I was losing hair. It took two years being off fnasteride for me to start getting paranoid about my hairloss again. I opted to start using rogaine foam and nizoral. I haven't lost a lot of hair since taking those two but I'm certainly not growing any back, and am more than likely losing ground.
I am constantly thinking about whether or not I should just quit trying to keep my hair and just buzz it all short, whether or not I should take finasteride again, or keep on going with rogaine foam and nizoral. I've been on that regimen for almost 6 months now. I can get finasteride really cheap. At walgreens I can get a 4 month supply for $10. Generic Proscar split into quarters.
One of my concerns is taking it a second round. Will it go exactly as it did the 1st round? Or could I potentially be hit by these really bad side effects people experience. The fact that I did notice a change in the strength of my erections after quitting the drug, is that a sign that I should not go back on it?
On a side note, I fully blame propecia for not being able to grow a full beard. As I started the drug when i was 18, i think that stunted my beard browing abilities.
I started finasteride in 2003 soon after my 18th birthday. When asking my doctor for hair loss cures he gave me two options. Propecia or Rogaine. He said both will help you keep the hair you have. I opted for propecia since it seemed a lot simpler to just take a pill then to apply liquid. I never really paid too much attention to side effects mainly because the odds were in my favor. There was a reported 1% chance I would have any side effects and I had a near 80% chance of success of growing or keeping my hair. The pill worked. My hair did this weird shedding thing for a while and my hair curled up on the top for a while. I would say after 3 - 6 months my hair started to look normal again and stopped curling. It would continue to shed periodically for about 1.5 years before it got to its full strength.
I eventually had switched off my insurance and started buying it online. Then I started getting paranoid about whether it was really finasteride I was taking. On top of that I started hearing stories of post finasteride syndrome. I wanted to donate blood, and found out you couldn't if you were taking the drug. With all of PFS news, and not even knowing if I was even taking the drug I decided to quit so that I could donate blood.
This is where things get interesting. A couple weeks off the drug I felt a change in personality. I also started getting really strong morning wood that would actually stick around for 5 + minutes. That and when I did get erections they didn't go soft right away like what I had been used to. Somewhere during the 7.5 years of taking the drug I must have slowly forgot what it was like to have normal erections, and simply thought I was fine.
I never had noticable hairloss, but could tell I was losing hair. It took two years being off fnasteride for me to start getting paranoid about my hairloss again. I opted to start using rogaine foam and nizoral. I haven't lost a lot of hair since taking those two but I'm certainly not growing any back, and am more than likely losing ground.
I am constantly thinking about whether or not I should just quit trying to keep my hair and just buzz it all short, whether or not I should take finasteride again, or keep on going with rogaine foam and nizoral. I've been on that regimen for almost 6 months now. I can get finasteride really cheap. At walgreens I can get a 4 month supply for $10. Generic Proscar split into quarters.
One of my concerns is taking it a second round. Will it go exactly as it did the 1st round? Or could I potentially be hit by these really bad side effects people experience. The fact that I did notice a change in the strength of my erections after quitting the drug, is that a sign that I should not go back on it?
On a side note, I fully blame propecia for not being able to grow a full beard. As I started the drug when i was 18, i think that stunted my beard browing abilities.
