Hello all,
I am a male aged 35, 5'8" 150lbs
I took finasteride for hair loss 1mg/d for 1 month from Sept - Oct 2020. Felt great for 3 weeks , especially since my anxiety over my hair loss was reduced. In the 4th week I started to notice intermittant brain fog and that I had gained a few lbs of belly fat. I decided to go off the finasteride for a month so see if the brain fog subsided. Brain fog did subside however I started to get very depressed about my hair loss again. I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder and I could not go a day without obsessing over my hair. Decided to go back on finasteride at half dose (0.5mg/d) about 4 weeks after going off of it- so early November 2020. Immediately I started getting hit with the brain fog again and some pretty intense anxiety. Stayed on it for a week but then said this drug is definitely not for me and quit for good. I was ok for the next 6 weeks or so. I still noticed the belly fat which made me upset but thought I could shed it through exercise. During this period I continued to get depressed and obsessed over my hair loss. I also went to see a doctor about the body fat as I had read that the body fat is due to estrogen from a drug after reading on the propeciahelp forum. Anyways after I continued to stress about my hair and the body fat I started to get additional symptoms in mid January (2 months after my last dose) these included a tingling sensation in my left nipple, erectile dysfunction (I had not been able to quantify if I had any erectile difficulties while on the drug or for the 2 months after). I got more obsessed with these symptoms and started reading more horror stories online about PFS. About a week ago things started to spiral out of control and got hit with a host of new symptons (insomnia, intense anxiety, more severe depression, clicking joints, fatigue, tight scrotum, no morning wood, anhedonia, non existant libido). I have lost 10 lbs but still the abdominal fat seems to have remained. I am freaking out so much that I dont know what the finasteride has done and what my anxiety/stress/depression has done. I went to see a psychiatrist the other day who chalked it up to anxiety and prescribed me Remeron to help with anxiety and sleep. I am at the lowest point in my life now and just took some time off work to work through this. I'm not sure what I should be doing to heal myself because I am not convinced of the source of my issues. I really cant live like this much longer. I want to give the medication a try and work on my mental health but I keep on thinking I have PFS based on my symptoms and that overwhelmes me and drives me to looks for other ways to recover which is what brought me here. I am glad that I have finally seen some success stories because between propeciahelp and reddit all I saw were horror stories and despair. Just wondering what you guys think of my situation. Thanks a lot