Jesus Christ I'm only 18! :(

[ParanoiaDestroya]

I literally don't know what to think. My dad is bald, his father is bald including my grandad from my mothers side. I always had this preconceived hope that the balding gene would skip me but alas, I must accept my fate. I don't know man, It's that fear you have that you might go bald but when it really hits you that you're actually balding, the feeling is surreal (in a bad way).

As a fellow sufferer, I have great sympathy for you. I experience it as a very morbid fear, and a sense of impending doom. That's beyond the intellectual, it's an emotional thing based on self image and social anxieties, which are all valid feelings that can begin to control your life if you let them. It's something I'm having to learn to deal with. As general preemptive advice, don't let yourself become one of those guys that put all his self esteem eggs in one basket and spends years on internet forums obsessing as his life in the outside world suffers. You don't want to wake up on your 40th birthday and realize that you've cheated yourself and you can't go back. You do not want that... Some comiseration is healthy, but it can quickly become too much. I've recently joined and straightaway I've realized that I need to not spend too much time on the forum. So I check it every other day for a few minutes and then GTFO.

I'm thinking of getting on propecia asap but damnit, how is this even fair? Why does balding even exist? It serves no biological/evolutionary purpose at all!

End/rant.

I understand how you feel. Of course, biology is not philosophy. Our concepts of justice don't matter to nature. I often feel like cursing something or someone for what has befallen me genetically, because it does feel to me that I'm being punished, beaten down over and over, maybe because I don't deserve to have a good life. But this is magical thinking, it's just an emotional reaction to hardship. I just have to keep reminding myself that it's not about anything except biology.

Get on finasteride if your doctor thinks it's safe for you. It helps a great deal to know that you're doing something about it, so just do everything you can. And breathe, my friend. Breathe.