Quitting Fin + Beginning My Road To Recovery - November 2022 - Feb 2023

So finally, I hit rock bottom and surrendered. It was a Saturday morning, around just under 4 months after I had taken my first dose. I needed help and so I found myself visiting my parents house to confess what was truly going on with me. They already knew something was up, but not the extent of it. As a generally positive, successful, optimistic, driven 27 year old man, business owner, and someone who has been independently living and making my own way for 5+ years, my parents were very concerned to see me show up in such bad shape and with a lot of my life in tatters.

And so in the aftermath of me filling them in, they very generously told me they would lend me a little money to help me get back on my feet over the next couple of months (something I tried to refuse but they absolutely insisted I took it and the truth it was I needed it and it was life-saving gesture). They also said they would support me in my recovery in whatever way that was needed. I welled up with tears of gratitude, hugged them, and vowed to never to take finasteride again. My entire life - from my mind, body, emotions, sexuality and spirit to my financial situation, habits, relationships, and business - felt like it had been sucked down a black hole in such a short time, but at least I wasn't going to go down any deeper. With no more finasteride in my system, I could finally begin the process of rebuilding my life. It felt like a dark spot to be in with quite a climb ahead of me to get back to my old life and self. But as I lay in the bed in my parents guest room that day, still shocked and steeped in my symptoms, I also felt deeply relieved that taking finasteride had come to an end.

In the immediate aftermath of quitting, I noticed some of my symptoms ironing out. Instead of feeling physically pummeled every few days I'd take a pill, I experienced increasing and stabilizing energy. Over the next few weeks following this, I definitely felt my neurological symptoms getting better. My heavy brain fog, negative thinking, low motivation and extreme emotions all started to lift, bit by bit. I could suddenly gain some separation from my thoughts and an awareness of my life situation again in a more objective way (rather than being sucked and consumed by everything that was happening). And as more time and distance from the last pill passed, I began to feel more able to process what had happened to me. I was definitely emotionally traumatized and shocked by everything, and so I felt sad, flat and depressed a lot of the time. However, I also noticed a subtle difference in these thoughts and emotions. They were more normal and not so extreme and blown out of proportion like when I was on finasteride. It felt like they were now only partly due to the lingering neurological and emotional side effects and now partly due to the genuine turmoil and anguish I felt due to the challenging upward climb I faced ahead of me to get my life back on track. Nonetheless, I started chipping away at it all to get my life back on track.

Within the first 1-2 months post quitting, I built up the habits of eating healthily again, lifting 4-5 times per week at the gym, quitting porn and regular fapping, and getting back into my business work. Despite some very shaky and anxious financial times, I eventually landing about 5 new clients and so things financially started to even out which was such a relief (although at the time of writing this in March 2023, I still don't feel completely out of the waters financially yet but it's far better than where I was at my rock-bottom point). Building these habits and results again was both rewarding and incredibly hard. I still felt mentally, emotionally and sexually impaired everyday, often strongly. I still felt traumatized, shocked and just depressed quite a bit. Yet I also felt hardened and mentally strong in a way I'd never felt before. I was overall glad to be off the finasteride and willing to face the consequences of my own past decisions and to get myself and my life back again. So I just got on with it all as best I could, knuckling down and pushing through from one moment at a time. I wasn't going to be a victim thinker here and would do what it took to get my life back. This mindset definitely led to some lighter and more positive moments, which started to filtering in here and there throughout my week, albeit sporadically. Another great win around this time was that I also rekindled a relationship with a great girl whom I'd previously dated for a short while the year before (pre-fin), and we decided to start dating again. She was an amazing source of support, joy and connection that helped me find greater balance while I was rebuilding the other areas of my life.

But even going into the 2-3 mark post-quitting, I still had some shocking symptoms I was living with week after week that had hardly budged at all. Chiefly, these were sexual but also emotional, neurological and physical too. To start with, I had literally (and I mean literally) zero libido for weeks and months post quitting. I felt asexual and could easily go weeks without a single sexual thought even though I was well and truly off the finasteride by this point. I'd walk past hot girls on the street or see them on movies and wanted to feel attracted and turned on by them, but I just couldn't. My body just wouldn't generate the turned on feeling. I'd also go over to my girlfriend's house and would be literally moments away from the opportunity to have sex with her and I felt no strong sexual desire or arousal. I was drawing a complete blank, nothing there. It was like the masculine side of the masculine-feminine polarity that creates sexual chemistry and attraction was missing from my experience. I eventually had to have a big chat with my girlfriend where I told her in greater depth what I was going through and why I might seems like I'm acting strange, not initiating things sexually or just being more flirty and fun like my usual self, and why I might struggle to have sex or be sexual with her properly for a while. I remember the night of this talk I was in a downswing and felt so helpless and frustrated as a 27 year old man at the peak of my virility and vitality sitting opposite a stunning girl who was eager to have sex with me right then and there, and literally not being able to do anything about it. But as shitty as this was, I manned up and accepted this as the consequence of my own choices, nobody else's. Luckily, again to my surprise, she was supportive, understanding and willing to be patient with me as I healed.

My poor erections also persisted basically as much as when I was on fin. I did started getting morning wood again a few weeks after quitting (maybe once or twice a week), but it was at a measly 50-60% strength. At any other point I tried to induce an erection, I just couldn't get harder than 60-70% maximum of what I was pre-fin. I also still felt numb in my legs, soles of my feet, and whole genital area. This was a constant, everyday, moment by moment, unending numbness and sense of disconnection between my dick and brain - unrelenting for months on end. This side effect was the most disconcerting to live with as its in your face all the time from the moment you wake up. It's just strange and quite awful to be constantly so numb down there. I felt emasculated by this. I also felt increasingly concerned that my fundamental masculinity, sexuality, strength, virility, drive etc. wasn't kicking in again in any significant way despite a couple of months passing without touching finasteride. I also felt like my emotional experience was dulled and my overall connection to life simply lacking excitement, passion and vibrancy. Even as I started building up my life again and experiencing a few wins, I felt like my capacity for experiencing happier emotions was just dimmed. Despite meditating again more often, I still felt like a still had a racier mind and was somehow trapped in a kind of reality bubble that separated me from others and life in general, as opposed to truly being able engage with them and able to be fully present with life. This last one was more subtle but still prevalent. In downswing moments, when all of these various symptoms flared up, it often felt like simple things became a struggle (such a simply talking to someone) and I had to exert my willpower a lot just to hold it together, ignore my symptoms, stay present in the moment and keep ploughing forward. All of this wasn't like the last time I had quit fin 5 years ago at all where things just bounced back basically to normal within a couple of weeks. I started realizing something deeper was amiss.

At this point, I feel it is proper to mention the state of my hair after post-fin. Within 2 weeks or less of quitting, my hair noticeably thinned out to the point where my hair loss became somewhat noticeable again (although not shockingly so). To my delighted surprise, my hair has remained this way 4 months later and I'd say that I have kept a little of my gains from finasteride. My hair definitely looks a little bit thicker than it was before I started fin the second time, but the main thing I've noticed since quitting is that the rate I was losing hairs each day has dramatically decreased. Before taking fin, I could simply run my hand through my hair and many hairs would come out in my hand, whereas now I only notice one or two. The same for when I brush my hair. I know it is still early days and that some guys report continued hair loss progression from around the 6 month mark onward, but I thought this was worth mentioning for those wondering what happened to me once I hopped off fin. I will keep updating my hair situation for those interested as time goes on too.

So am I confident and happy with my hair right now? I mean not greatly. Coming out of the shower in certain lighting makes it look thin af. When the wind blows up my hair on the street, I can feel cold air on the skin of the receded corners. But I am a changed man now. I know what I have survived. I feel more deeply connected to my inner worth, strength and intrinsic confidence and value than ever before. So much so that while appearance still obviously matter to a degree to us all, my core self has shifted. Honestly if and when my hair goes now, it goes. So be it. If any extremely safe and natural ways are invented in the future for keeping hair, sure I can see myself considering it depending on how I'm doing then. But I will never touch a pharmaceutical drug again for cosmetic reasons. Ever. I will never take anything that fucks with hormones or the body in any way that skews its natural functioning and balance for cosmetic reasons. I'm now even hesitant to take any pharmaceuticals unnecessarily for my health in general, from paracetamol to antibiotics unless I am truly convinced it is necessary and my essential and only recourse for whatever health issue I might encounter in the future. I am absolutely committed to living an extremely clean and holistically healthy life in all ways. And I am also willing to do the inner work to heal any future emotional insecurities and wounds that may arise in me so I can be a truly inwardly confident, worthy, integrated and inspiring person and man in the world. So anyway, that's my current situation and mindset regarding my hair after everything. I feel significantly, genuinely, and deeply free of one of my deepest fears and insecurities. I may not be fully free of It, but it's been a majorly liberating and life-changing shift regarding my attitude to my hair loss and that's a huge gift from coming from this whole experience that I am grateful for.