Hi everyone,

My story on Finasteride
Took it for 1 month, dosing 1mg every 3 days. Finally felt ecstatic about doing something about my hair loss. Started shedding at 25, I'm 31 now.
2 weeks in I noticed my sleep deteriorating rapidly for no reason and started having creeping anxiety issues and feelings of doom.
Googled fin side effects after a month and god help me I ended up on PH, entering the worst period of my life.
Stopped cold turkey and dreaded so much about a coming crash that I basically walked myself into a major panic attack about a week after my last dose.

First 3 months
A complete roller coaster of mental issues. Intense anxiety attacks followed up by major depressive episodes and suicidal ideation every single day. In between I'd have days of weird brain pressure and a strange feeling of "empty eye sockets".
My digestion was shot to hell and I couldn't feel my member let alone gain erections. My hands would go cold and numb at times and my heart was pounding in my chest, keeping me up at night. If I did get sleep it was never longer than 2 hours.
From time to time I felt as if I was coming down with a major flu, more on that later.
Erections actually came back after a few weeks but at this point I could not care less as my brain was a pitch black pit.
For some reason my body was in a constant state of high energy. I walked 20km a day and never felt that soothing feeling of calmness or tiredness. Sleep felt more like falling unconscious than comfortably dosing off.
After reading about PFS, and the stigma it carried with it, I never made the effort of trying specialized doctors. I'm lucky my GP is very compassionate and assisted me all the way to check me up and just listen to my story.

My first blood work was done in the first few weeks post crash. Everything came back normal, although we didn't check hormonals as, by his words, they would not clarify much having no baseline to begin with.
I geared myself up for recovery by moving around a lot, eating healthy (I was on keto even before fin) and seeing my parents / friends often. I cut out all gluten, remaining sugars and caffeine.
I did get obsessed by finding that magical cure and spent a few hundred euros on supplements I didn't need, but at least I did no further damage to my body.

Month 3-6
My severe anxiety attacks settled into a general feeling of constant moderate to strong anxiety paired with an elevated heart rate. A feeling of despair and hopelessness followed me around all this time.
I asked my GP for a psychiatrist referral, who then put me on 15mg of mirtazapine to help me fix my sleep. I'm not allowed to be on SSRI's due to my job and he agreed to assist me in a "more natural" recovery.
Mirtazapine didn't do that much it seemed at first but my sleep did improve slowly, being able to sleep 4-5 hours uninterrupted at this point.
My libido came back to it's original state around month 4, which did help me further chip away at my anxiety.
I developed a stable baseline, which was still bad, but at least less so than being on this hellish brain roller coaster.
Anxiety attacks gave way to sporadic adrenaline rushes and feelings I can't otherwise describe as tiny heart orgasms.

Second blood work ordered by my psych came back with a few surprises:
- Cholesterol shot up dramatically, but so did my good cholesterol so at least no real issues there yet
- My TSH shot up from 3 to 5.5, well out of normal range
- I had recent antibodies to CMV, a virus I had during my childhood. Probably due to a weakened immune system it flared back up, most definitely explaining why I felt sick often post crash

Near the end of month 6, a few weeks before arriving here, my situation was as followed: constant moderate anxiety, light to moderate depression, broken unrefreshing sleep, and loose stool.

My situation now
Let me start of that finding this forum and the prevailing air of optimism and big dick energy was extremely refreshing after lurking PH for a few months. (I will never set foot in that place again)
Immediately after reading some topics I felt I had positive thoughts about my condition and renewed energy.
I don't like expressing my state in percentages as it feels a bit obsessive (maybe people with obsessive tendencies lean into "PFS" more often?) but here goes:
I'm at a good 75% now, my low being 30%, now gearing up to give it everything to go well past 100%!

My followup blood work to check up my thyroids for subclinical hypothyroidism came back with another surprise: my TSH is now back down to 2.9. So my body is giving me the green light for full recovery :-)

Just finished a 3 day water fast and started a 7 day juice fast. Getting used to cold showers and meditating more often. Got some herbs ordered to cycle after and just keep doing what I was doing.

Some thoughts
During my first few months my mother told me she had a major hypochondrial episode at the age of 30 (around my age). She was convinced she had cancer and was dying. This was caused by bottled up anxiety concerning her mothers fight and death to cancer at a young age.
She expressed many of the same symptoms I was going through. She even had CMV flare up again just like me.
This makes me echo the thought that a lot of what I'm going through is at least partly due to severe health anxiety.
Finasteride may have rocked the boat in a brutal way, but convincing myself I was going to drown 24/7 did not do me any favors.

I've been living inside my own head for months and PFS has been taking center stage for too long now. This post has been therapeutic but I most likely wont be a very active poster.
I do promise I'll return to post about a full recovery. Maybe that will help others with my symptoms find a bit of calm and hope.

Keep that big dick energy going, and thanks for that extra bit of motivation and optimism I dearly needed.