Bowsas Return

It’s been a while since I have posted, I am a 21 year old and my pharmaceutical poison was a drug called accutane that I took for around 2 years from 14-16. I have a lot of the symptoms of most other PFS patients with the worst of it being erectile dysfunction, numb gentitals, no feeling at all when ejaculating/orgasm is completely gone (this is what bothers me the most), depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts.

I will admit I really fell off the wagon in the past 6 months. I was doing well following the protocol for about 6 months and even did a 14 day water fast last year. I really isolated myself from my friends last summer while doing the protocol and this bothered me a lot. Quitting drinking and smoking led me to deciding to hangout with my friends less. Anyway I began smoking weed, drinking, partying again the past 6 months and am back to square one.

I am thinking about just telling some of my close friends that accutane really messed me up screwing up my hormones, gut, giving me ED and low libido, depression, suicidal thoughts, most likely am now infertile too, but I just don’t know if it’s a good idea as I am embarrassed about the sexual sides and I don’t want it to get around to everyone that I’m some kid with ED, be judged, made fun of. Maybe I need to just learn to not give a fuck about that stuff and just do whatever it takes to heal.

All I know is that, I want to get back on the protocol and go 100%. I’ve decided to start going to therapy and will probably ask a shrink for advice about telling others how fucked up I am and how I could go about that, if it’s a good idea. Maybe my friends will support me and understand my need to be sober for the next few years or longer if I tell them what’s really going on with me. Idk.

Even if it takes me from now (age 21) to age 30 to completely recover, I think it would be worth it. I’d still have a long life ahead of me where I could actually have a fucking sex drive and could feel my dick again. I want to get married and be able to have kids some day, and just be happy again.

I’m kinda all over the place and rambling, if anyone’s reading this. Tell me your thoughts on coming clean to friends, explaining why I need to be sober and do the protocol. I know I need to get back on the protocol and be hardcore about it.

Suicidal thoughts have really fucked me up these past few months but no matter how bad it gets, I promised myself I will never act on those thoughts. My cousin took his own life a few weeks ago and he was the same age as me. Only 21 years old and now he’s gone. The same week he killed himself I was having one of the worst depressive weeks of my life with very dark thoughts and really wanting to end things. His death hit me really hard and I just couldn’t stop thinking about how that could have easily been me. I refuse to let myself get to that point not only for my own sake but I just know how destroyed my family would be, my mother especially.

This was a very long post, but writing this all out was somewhat therapeutic for me. I suspect I have a difficult case seeing that I continued accutane for another year and a half after the sexual sides hit me (doctors told me all side effects would go away after stopping which I had no reason not to believe a medical professional) learned my lesson there, and the fact that I was so young, probably just finishing puberty, Idek I think I was an early bloomer. I started getting acne in like 5th grade. Whatever, just thinking out loud, sharing my thoughts. Time to stop writing and go to bed.

I 100% believe I can recover and live a happy life and it will not come easy, it may take 2 years, 5 years, 10 years but in the end it will be worth it and I need to remember that.

Hey man, I’ll keep it short & succinct.

I’m happy to hear you’ve made the commitment to not kill yourself. Honor that every time you think about it. I too have made that commitment and it makes me stronger every time I find myself in the hole.

Depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts – these are all common consequences of your environment, not just accutane/fin/SSRI etc. I’m not dismissing what the drug did to you, but I can say with confidence that nobody can ever heal from anything if their current environment is detrimental to their mental health and soul. This goes both ways – bachelor life & spartan life. If incorporating certain aspects of the protocol takes away from your quality of life, then you need to find ways to reintegrate it in a way that it won’t. It should supplement the life you’d like to be living, PAS/PFS or not. Social connection is a nutrient that I think should be right up there with herbs and exercise. If you’re expensing that for something that ultimately just causes you more stress, at best you’ll stay the same, most likely become more depressed. Even when whatever you’re trading it for is good for you. At that price, it no longer is. Start slow, build up, and eventually you’ll put it all together in a way that makes you happy.

@Damn said it best: don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. It’s all about balance. Cliche but true.

That being said, drinking and smoking takes their toll on everybody. I have friends who are perfectly healthy and moderate both because of the depression and mental health toll they take. I also have tons of friends who were stoners that don’t touch it anymore because they developed anxiety and all sorts of other shit. This transition seems to happen somewhere between 21 & 25 lol, so you’ll figure it out eventually.

As to talking to your friends, family, and whoever else – balance. It’s extremely healthy and therapeutic to offload shame and emotional weight, but you don’t want to make a dependency out of it. Don’t let it become your identity – it will only reinforce the state you’re in and make it that much harder to overcome. That is why people leave this site. They come to understand that they need to shed and walk away from this label in order to cross the line into the life they truly want to live. I highly suggest using therapy to work on other aspects of your life and not just address your current state of health.

You’re only 21. Like you said, you have so much more life to live. Focus on living it to the fullest in the way that you’d like to. Take time to envision the life you’d want to live, even if you didn’t have these health problems, and then take steps and execute. Be kind to yourself and give yourself a pat on the back for even taking steps forward at all. There is always enough time.

All the best brotha,

Ratchet