And the Suffering and Pain returns...

[townie]

Okay I am now only 3 weeks away from the 1 year mark...For the past year I have been on finasteride(1/4 tablet of proscar daily), nizoral shampoo and regaine. I have not missed a dose of finasteride yet...And what has it to show??? Absolutely nothing. I have zero results, absolutely no results what so ever. I just had a haircut and my hair is now short enough and i can see that my hair has not improved whatsoever. I have been suffering long enough for da past 5 years and when I started finasteride last year I finally felt a bit of ease because I was confident it was going to work, but now since I am approaching the 1 year mark and there is no significant improvement, my suffering is beginning to return. I am only 2 weeks away from my 21st birthday and I should be excited about this but all i can think about is my hair. Why isnt finasteride working for me? I am 20? It should work? I feel hopeless now. My confidence levels are at an all time low, and i think that this forum is the only place where i can express my feelings.
Someone please help me and give me some light or good news or just something. Please.

[macster]

Well, I'm sure you wish the results would have been better, but your results are actually not bad. You hair loss has not progressed further and that itself is very good news. It seems that at least for now, you have been able to press "pause" on the balding process.

Keep doing what you are doing. I am into my 4th year of treatment with rogaine, propecia, and nizoral and things actually progressively got better. My results improved the 2nd year, 3rd year, and even into the 4th year. The improvements were very slow and steady but they are there. There is even a study out there that for about 50% of men, results with finasteride IMPROVE over the course of 10 years rather than taper off.

So keep doing what you are doing. If the medication keeps working in slowing down or stopping the progression of the balding process, you can then become a good candidate for a hair transplant that can address the hair loss that has already occurred.

Things are going ok. Keep your head up.

[redy]

what are you going to do?
stop?

no, you won't do that, so what good does this thought process do you?

you aren't entitled to anything - my treatment isn't doing wonders for my hair either and my head is as big as a planet with a forehead to land a helicopter on at the age of 22 but whatever, I am doing all that I can and that just is what it is.

Nobody is going to magically answer this thread with some secret step that you missed in your countless hours of googleing, there is no amazing hairstyle that covers everything up that for some reason you haven't thought of, you aren't going to wake up one day and not care anymore.

Just trying to be honest, because that's all there is. Life sucks one way or another, and if you genuinely can't find happiness outside of hair - what does your life even mean?

Find what makes you happy man, you'd be surprised how being yourself lets the rest of your life fall into place.

I'm almost to the point of sacking up and buzzing off my hair so I'm not trying to hide any traces of my hairline or afraid of wind or afraid that the girl I'm seeing will touch my hair more than it can move intact. I know I will be a million times happier once I do this, but I can't image what it's like to not have at least this facade of a hairline for image reasons. But then again, who the hell is it even for if I still hate it about myself?

If you can't look at yourself and smile, who can?

Do what you are doing and move your mind into other pastures - that's the best you can do.

[Notcoolanymore]

Both of the responses were good. You just have to give treatments more time. I personally have heard that some guys started having results at two years on fin, so you just have to hang in there. It may happen or you might just hold ground. We always want to be like that guy we have all read about that grew all of his hair back. Unfortunately that is not the norm. If things improve then great, but at the very least we need to appreciate what we do have, because unfortunately there are guys that are in way worse shape.