About 8 months ago I decided to do something about my crown - at the time it was about the size of a 50p coin, the hair around it was pretty thick but I figured that prevention was the best cure so went to belgravia centre. They sold me alzeic acid plus minoxidil (12.5%) after I said I didn't fancy propecia. Used the stuff for three weeks which gave me a cracking headache every day, so stopped and returned it to them.
From then on I literally watched as hair was lost from my crown at a speed that I can't even begin to describe - genuinely scary. The more it thinned out, the more I would feel anxious, the harder it was to sleep and the less I ate.
After about four months of almost total insomnia (managed about 2/2.5 hours sleep a night) and getting up every morning and being sick (due to the overwhelming anxiety that I was experiencing from hairloss, the speed of it, and how I would look at the age of 24 with no hair) I eventually had to split up with my girlfriend of 6 years.
Ended up feeling so bad that eventually had to go to the doctor. After trying various meds and seen various people over the last couple of months am now taking sinequan which has totally got rid of the anxiety. Can now eat, sleep and function normally and am seeing a cognitive behavioural psychologist who's realigning the way I look at things and changing my perception of what's important and what's not. I've also seen a certified trichologist who's helping me deal with the hairloss through the use of a topical anti-androgen. Too early to know if it's working, but would still rather do something than nothing...
Hairloss is potentially lethal. It has the potential to ruin lives. They say that male pattern baldness occurs in those people who have excessive androgens combined with a genetic predisposition to male pattern baldness. I would add to that that for hairloss to ruin your life, which it can easily do, you need the 2 factors mentioned above plus a mental outlook that allows you to inflate the importance of having a full head of hair so massively that without it you can feel that life's not worth living.
I think one of the users on this forum has a tag line that says something like "you have to sort out your mind before you can sort out your hair or you'll end up losing both....". I think that's definitely true. The way I'm looking at it right now, is that i'm still here and that given how low I've felt I now have genuinely nothing to lose. Which means that I can go all out to create a great life for myself - to develop my career, to build a great physique, to spend time with friends and have them look forward to seeing me because I've got a great sense of humour and I'm fun to be around, to be confident and happy irrespective of what's happening on top of my head...
I think that within my lifetime - hopefully within the next 10 or fifteen years - there will be a "cure" for this hairloss crap, whether it's developed transplantation techniques / hair multiplication / some new amazing topical solution or a pill that will fix this problem. When that thing comes along, I want to be successful and wealthy, happy in myself and in good health with a great bunch of friends and a good relationship with my family. I want any hairloss "cure" to be an added bonus for me - something that makes a great life an even better one. The alternative is that I let this eat away at me and my confidence and my sense of worth so much that by the time a cure comes along I'll be a broken man - I will have lost my job, I'll have ignored my friends and family and I'll have no money to pay for this great new solution (which I'm assuming already will be pretty expensive...).
Life lasts a long time fellas. Sorting out our minds has to be stage one - without a sense of perspective, and an attitude or way of thinking that is positive and conducive to achieving great things with our lives, then we'll allow this one problem to ruin everything else that contributes to a good life.
Specifically, on the anti-depressants thing, everyone is on this site because they're concerned about hairloss. Just as some will have already lost a lot or even all of their hair already, some will be at the early stages, yet the amount lost will not affect how well or badly people are dealing with their situation (I felt a billion times worse three months ago, at which point I can categorically say i had a lot more hair than I do now...). So, if you think that you need to get a new perspective on this, or you need to stop overwhelming feelings of anxiety and/or depression, then ask your doctor to refer you to a psychiatrist who will discuss with you whether medication and/or a regular appointment with a psycholgist could be of benefit to you. As stabber said, cognitive behavioural psycholists are the way forward - they don't just listen to you talk about your problems but help you to make the changes necessary in your life to feel better, more positive and excited about life.
There's nothing embarassing or shameful about getting a little help to deal with this (especially as you don't have to tell anyone about it). It's your life - don't let hair loss f*ck it up for you.
Good luck.
