Fellas and ladies,
First time poster. I may be one of the longest lurkers on the forums. If you've been creeping around here longer than me, congrats, and I'm sorry. Of all the posts, over all these years, this one pulled me out of the wood work. I'll give you the abbreviated version. Started on finasteride 12 years ago. Over this time, combined with minoxidil, RU and other things at various times, I Have maintained a Norwood 1.5. About 6 or 7 years ago I started having extreme depression/anxiety. Given my line of work, not abnormal, but absolutely not my normal personality type. The years went on and something drastically changed. My wife will tell you, I was a different person, mentally. We would be in the middle of a conversation, and I would completely check out. I could not hold focus on a thought. "Run to the store and grab me this......". Rest assured, even when I wrote myself notes, I would forget it. My line of work, I have a lot public interactions/interviews. My head would actually hurt trying to form thoughts or express words that I absolutely knew, and were on the tip of my tongue, but just would not come to fruition. It stressed my marriage in a huge way, was even worse for my career. Fast forward, a year ago I decided to ween off of the finasteride pill and switch to a topical cocktail prepared by my doctor. It has topical finasteride, min, and bunch of other goodies that will remain classified, as will he. I, as well as my wife, could tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that A) I spent years living as a zombie because of
Finasteride, and I didn't have to. Thank God, I am back to normal, and I can't believe how much my life was impacted by this drug, truly. B) The topical mix (that I'm using) absolutely works, and has no side effects.
Now, I have been on here long enough to know that there will be people that say,"Whatever, first post, you're a troll, stop ruining this for other people, blah blah blah". I'm not telling you not to use finasteride. Use it. Please. It has done wonders for me. But 100% beyond a shadow of a doubt it has the potential, given enough time, to do harm. IF you can find a topical that is formulated properly, it works amazingly and does not have the ill effects that the pill did. I am very very in tune with my body. This was an intentional experiment when I weened off of the pill. When I tell you that life was so dramatically different before and after, given the amount of time that I was on the pill, it's not even funny. Please use it, but use responsibly. That is all. Carry on.
