Can’t tolerate Propecia, mired in hopelessness

[Jay40]

Tried finasteride three times.

I mean, REALLY tried. First attempt lasted about four months. Shrunken penis, weak erections, general feeling of lifelessness.

Stopped, waited a year, restarted at .50 every other day. Slightly better erections, lasted eight months. Then the chest pain and gyno swelling started.

Stopped again, waited another year, restarted at .25 every two days. Shrunken penis, next to impossible to get an erection, and sex became increasingly painful. Penis started curving and suspected fibrosis was beginning. Reduced to .25 every three and then four days. Lasted three months. No change in side effects so stopped. It’s been about two months now and I’ve mostly recovered.

I’ve read about people “powering through” sides on this forum. I wish I had the mental fortitude to try again but honestly, looking down at my bent penis throbbing in pain was giving me nightmares.

NW3V now, with diffuse thinning all over the top and probably heading to NW6 or NW7.

Not here to scaremonger or try to warn people away from fin. If you can take it, not experience side effects and maintain your hair…then you’re living in my dream world!!! I’m sick with envy. You’re unbelievably lucky!!!

I can’t describe how insanely frustrated it makes me to read literally anything positive related to this drug. I can’t listen to the Bald Truth Talk show now because it’s nothing but stories about it changing people’s lives and letting them maintain their hair. How ridiculous is it to get hit with both the worst balding genes and a physiology unable to tolerate the one thing that could do anything about it?

So now it seems there’s nothing to do but sit around, go bald and then spend my life savings on as many transplants as my donor hair will allow. I can’t describe how galling and depressing it’s been to drop Norwood after Norwood and not be able to do anything about it without wrecking my body.

[someonenew]

Sorry to hear that it didn't work out for you! Stories like these is what makes me very reluctant to start taking propecia

Did you get rid of the side effects at least? Did you penis get back to pre-propecia size?

[Jay40]

It's been two months and I seem to be back to normal, which would suggest I've avoided the dreaded crash or PFS syndrome. Penis size is back too - now waking up with monster sized erections, whereas for the entire three months of my final attempt, I was BARELY able to sustain (painful) sex. The difference is like night and day. These sides are VERY real.

I was able to recover from my previous two attempts as well. Insanely, a part of me wants to try again, although I think I've done about everything you could possibly do to minimize sides, in terms of reducing the dosage and frequency. The unpredictability of the sides was honestly pretty frightening, and I'm not someone prone to hypochondria. I drew the line at the throbbing genital pain and incipient fibrosis, as I wanted to keep my sex life.

I don't understand how anyone can take this medicine and not experience side effects. The idea of "popping it like candy" as someone suggested frankly blows my mind! Not saying people can't do it, but I'm VERY suspicious of the 2% side effects figure. From my experience and the experiences of people I've talked to in real life, almost everyone experienced some kind of side effects, many of them intolerable as mine were. I'd hoped I'd be able to reduce them through reducing the dosage until they dropped to a tolerable level, but no luck. I don't doubt that people have committed suicide over this drug, nor do I doubt that PFS is real. If Spencer had experienced the same effects I have, I guarantee his radio show would be very, very different. Same for anyone currently promoting fin. Long into my first and second attempts at taking the drug, I kept telling myself that the sides were in my head, and that they would go away over time. Well, they weren't, and they didn't!

There seems to be a general trend online towards attempting to do "damage control" on stories like mine. People are called hypochondriacs, statistical anomalies, or reassured that they just need to keep taking the drug, reduce the dose, etc. Fin is constantly referred to as "FDA-approved medication," as if this confers some kind of magical safety profile on it. So I listened, and tried all that - for five years! And I've been lurking on this forum for about seven. So I want to stress that I'm not some newbie who took fin for a week, panicked and stopped. This has been a MASSIVE struggle and I feel utterly defeated.

So, should you try it? Up to you, but think very carefully about my case, which doesn't seem all that uncommon. As I said in my original post, I'm not trying to scaremonger, just reporting a situation that has caused me insane amounts of grief and despair over the past five years. The inability to 'stabilize' the hairloss without destroying my hormones in the process has deeply affected my quality of life.

So, what next? The only real hope now seems to be multiple expensive HTs over a period of years, unless I'm missing something (in which case, please let me know. Already using minoxidil, to little effect). I very rarely hear of stories like mine, in contrast to the "Fin will save your life!" or "It was poison and ruined my health after one pill!" extremes. What are you supposed to do when you've tried to tolerate it past the point of all reason and are still committed to keeping your hair?

[stratowich]

You should use some kind of DHT blocker/5-alpha reductase inhibitor. Otherwise you will also loss transplanted hair. You could give Alfatradiol a shot or look into microdosing topical finasteride.

Just look up topical finasteride on google. There is so much information on it, including methods to preparing your on from dissolving propecia pills in a certain solvent (vehicle). But make sure your girlfriend does not come in contact with crushed finasteride pills, as it can lead to severe pregnancy complications, including fetus deformations.

Also, a lot of people are anticipating this so called Brotzu lotion from Fidia to come out soon, which is believed to have no/less possible side effects than Finasteride but similar pharmacokinetic properties.

If you still have a decent amount of hair though you should just go with alfatradiol and minoxidil for 1-2 years and carefully follow new treatments that might come out this or the next years. The future is not as dark as some people like to draw it on the forums.

[Jay40]

Any more information on this alfatradiol? As for topical fin - I tried Googling this and found reports of people just crushing up the tablets and mixing them into minoxidil and/or Nizoral shampoo...is this legit? Is this essentially what the topical fin from Hasson and Wong is? If not, how exactly would I go about getting topical fin?

Also...RU? Should I try to get and use this along with topical fin, minoxidil and alfatradiol?

Sorry for the vagueness of some of this but I am really in the dark here and it seems like longshots are all I have left. Not willing to give up the battle - all advice and/or help greatly appreciated!

[iveusedeverything]

I was on propecia from 2009 to 2012.
I went from humpy dumpy to dicky limpy...