propecia vs. generic propecia firsttime user

[liquid]

well i am a new member but i have been reading up here from a few days, the fqa were very informative. i am in my early twenties and i notice my hair is thinning at the front and i am losing hair above my temples. if i am correct from a diagram i saw this is stage 2 hair loss. i would like to stop this process now and from what i have seen propecia and its generic could help me. but its about fifty and twenty five a month respectively then i heard proscar can be cut into fifths and had for about 12 dollars a month. i have decided that i would be able to afford the generic at twenty five a month. as far as health insurance is concerned they make you buy generic everything if its available, my grandmother had generic zocore (sp). so i would assume since its all fda approved it should be equal. is there any recommended type of generic manufacture i should buy from or any certain website i should go to. also keep in mind in your recommendations i will need them to write me a script. thank you in advance i have found this site very informative.

thank you,
james

 

[Titan]

I was on the real propecia for three months, but have just moved to the generic Finpecia manufactured by Cipla that this site offers to save some bucks. I'm getting it a fair bit cheaper than propecia and there haven't been any sides, but its still not as cheap as proscar.
I wasn't sure about proscar cause I went to a site that addressed the question about using proscar as a propecia replacement. It said that "proscar was a different drug with a very different purpose," but it does contain finasteride as its active ingredient, so who knows. I know heaps of guys on this site are on it, they can give you more info. One thing you can be sure of is that Propecia is FDA approved to combat hairloss, and Proscar is FDA approved to combat Benign prostate hyper-whatever. After that its your call.
I am still considering moving to proscar, cause the dollar savings would be pretty massive, but for the moment I'm sticking with the generic stuff I'm getting through HairLossTalk.com until I can find out more myself, Plus I trust it enough as I don't think this site would associate itself with a dodgy product.... although looking at HairLossTalk.com's new avatar I am a bit worried.

 

[pharoh]

It said that "proscar was a different drug with a very different purpose," but it does contain finasteride as its active ingredient

Do any of your long-term members know if this is true? I have never ever seen this come up before, everywhere I read it says proscar is IDENTICAL to propecia, the only difference between them being one is 1mg the other is 5mg.

 

[Stingray]

Proscar is the 5mg variety of Merck brand finasteride... Propecia is 1mg variety. Proscar is only FDA approved for the use in treating BPH, but can be prescribed off label for the treatment of male pattern hairloss. You can cut it into 4ths or 5ths and save a lot of money. It's still finasteride, so don't worry. I'd go merck brand over any cipla product personally.

 

[liquid]

thanks for the infor but now i am confused. i called a few local drug stores asking about generic propecia and they said there is no such thing. so what is it that they are selling as generic propecia and is it approved by the fda for hairloss. as far as proscar how hard is it to cut into 1/5 or 1/4.
thanks
james