Hi everyone.

[recedoroy]

It’s finally happened. I’m a bald guy.

My hair loss story started when I was 17. I remember it clearly because it was Christmas day 2006. As I got ready for the arrival of family I showered and went to apply my hair styling product of choice. Nothing other than ‘my hair feels weird today’ went through my mind. I proceeded to enjoy Christmas day with only the knowledge that my hair wouldn’t sit as well as I would have liked. Unimportant.

I didn’t know that feeling would become a daily experience for the next few months. I should say as teenager I had incredibly thick hair. The only way that I could style it was in a way that I liked- ruffled up in a sort of messy just out of bed look. I liked it. I looked in the mirror and thought ‘that looks good’. I genuinely believe that if I had had what you could call normal density and suffered the same rate of hair loss, I’d have been a slap head at 21.

So the early months of 2007, I knew something was up with my hair, it felt limp and straw like. By spring I was hit with the realisation that it was hair loss. Hairs would just tear out in the shower. By the time I was finished brushing my teeth at night there would be 10-20 hairs in the sink. the same on my pillow in the morning. I would choke on hairs falling from my head on a daily basis, and pick them off my shoulder at a rate that felt like hourly. Studying was traumatic, every hair so clear against the white of the paper, despairing every five minutes as a fresh one fell.

That first realisation hits you like a ton of bricks. I was 17 about to turn 18. Not even left high school. I was young. The future was this great thing I couldn’t wait to jump into. Aging was something that happened, ‘when you were older’. A lifetime away. It was just a word, something you knew would gather meaning at some point way off in the distance, but at the moment it was not even visible beyond the horizon. A future filled with excitement and unknown promise. Then suddenly it was right in front of my face. In fact, bashing me over the head every day. I’m not sure you’re supposed to feel like that at 17. Today, at 26, I look at my friends and sometimes have this incredulous thought, do they still feel the way I used to? Has nothing changed for them since the time when we were all young confident teenagers? Do they still walk down the street and feel their looks as being in their prime? Their self-confidence untouched? It is almost hard for me to get my head around the fact that might be the case for them. The happiness and confidence of my 17 year old self I barely relate to anymore. It’s like remembering a dream. That was a different person. The happy me. Before hair loss.

The first stage of feeling like life had changed, was noticing the subtle differences in the way people react to you. I wasn’t some incredible looking guy, certainly not ‘pretty’, but I was good looking in that rugged kind of way. The mop of hair on my head rounded everything well. As soon as my hair became flat and straw like, my appearance changed. Subtly, but certainly to an extent it changed things. It sounds really vain and I’m embarrassed that I care say but I began to notice girls paying less attention to me. If my mates and I were with a group of girls collectively and those types of conversations that take place when you are young happened; who do you think is the best looking? who do you like etc?, it started to be me with less and less frequency. I accept that this may have been my head overplaying things, noticing the times when it didn’t happen more, the piles of hair on my pillow in the morning distorting my ability to be objective.

What I do know happened for sure, was the feeling of being punched in the gut every time I saw my own appearance in the mirror. Something people say to you is, oh you’re being insecure and seeing something that other people don’t. It was how it made me feel that was making me most depressed. In those early days when my self-assurance was still intact, even in the knowledge that I was losing my hair, I could still go about my days with genuine happiness and confidence. I’d be out with friends having a great time, and then catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror in the bathroom, and it would instantly floor me. Turn a good day to bad one in a second.

Ok so at 18-20, losing my hair introduced an element of depression to my life that I had never experienced before, but it was far from overwhelming. I thought ok, I’m not going to look quite like I thought I would, and with that not as good looking as I thought I would, but I can handle that. I mean for goodness sake think of people with real problems. Tricks like blow drying and the right hair cut meant that I could still leave the house in the morning and feel ok about myself.

Then the next stage happens where ‘tricks’ start to fail you. The moments of looking in the mirror and going, ‘ye I can handle how that looks’ become less frequent. At 20 years old I got on Propecia. It certainly slowed down my hair loss to the extent I wasn’t noticing hairs falling on such a regular basis. 15-20 on my pillow in the morning became 4-5, and I stopped noticing so much coming out in the shower. It calmed me down a bit. However over the piece, my hair continued to fall out. Each year while I was on Propecia, from 20-23, the density decreased and my temples receded further and further. I only intended to take it short term. I was convinced that there would be some point as I got older at which I would cease to care about losing my hair, and Propecia was just to tide me over until I got to that point. So when I began to hear about side effect stories I just thought, it’s not worth it, and I’m still losing my hair anyway albeit at a slower rate. It is three years now since I stopped taking Propecia. Pretty immediately the amount of shedding I noticed increased again. None in the sink became 2 or 3. But it certainly hasn’t returned to the levels of shedding I had at 18-19. If that happened it be completely bald pretty quick.

But over the last year I feel I’ve been hit with again another phase of the depression. It seems like each stage of hair loss, at least for me, goes something like this-It floors you, depresses you, takes a while to be able to look in the mirror, and then you accept it and go, ok, if it stays like this I can handle it. But then it gets worse, and you go through the same process, and then it gets worse again. I’ve reached the point now that I’ve been terrified of since I was 17. That accepting phase is not arriving. Not in any way shape or form do I know how to look at my reflection and not instantly be kicked into a deep depression, which can sometimes last days or weeks. The thinning at the front of my head is now so bad that I un-mistakenly have that bald guy look, no matter the cut or the styling. I’m sorry to people who are completely bald. I know they’ll read this and think, you think you are unlucky? In a similar fashion to how I feel when I read people saying , help I’m losing my hair and I’m only 25! Try 17. And then there will be those who lost it all both fast and young. That sucks. At the end of the day its crap no matter how or when it strikes. I’m not really sure why I’m writing this. I just kicked in my shower door after glancing in the mirror. Then I came on this sight to check for any progress in finding the miracle cure, as I do sometimes. I ended up reading someone’s story and it felt therapeutic. Better than kicking stuff anyway.

The way people just completely invalidate you when you complain about it is unacceptable. I’m not saying lets throw all this money and research into it because its such a horrible condition. I mean, lets cure cancer first. But peoples attitude to it is so wrong. You can’t say, ‘man up and stop caring so much about how you look’, when we as a society instantly judge people by their appearance. Without a doubt my friends react to me differently in a very subtle way. If you asked them they’d say nonsense I’m being insecure, but they do. It’s just a glance, or a throw away comment. Or even just the things they choose not to say to me, but do to others. You definitely fall down the alpha male pecking order once you start to lose your looks. It probably doesn’t help that the friend group I’ve had since school are all good looking lads. As for women, that speaks for itself.

The thing is I complain about how people react to me because of my looks, but I know that I do it too. We all make instant and unconscious judgements about people. It seems such a difficult thing to override. To look at someone and not see their body but some abstract thing that is their personality. I’m trying to make my identity the things I think, the choices I make, the things I do, and not see myself as the body I’m in. But it’s very hard. The worst thing is I’m not depressed. I’d never kill myself. I’m just constantly unhappy and want to be alone a lot. It’s like if you are out and wearing a really itchy top or something, or if you’re shoes are too tight and are causing you pain, all you’re really thinking about is getting home and taking them off. You’re not enjoying your life, just getting by. I feel such a relief when I get home and shut the door behind me and I’m alone. Then I am just me. Then I am just my thoughts and my actions, because nobody is judging me by my appearance.

There’s not much I would choose over getting my hair back. To be a billionaire? No way. If someone said I could be dropped on the street with no money and no home but have a full head of hair I wouldn’t even think twice. Hell I’d lose a limb if it got me my hair back. Sorry if that sounds insensitive. Maybe I wouldn’t, but I genuinely don’t think that with a good prosthetic losing a limb would impact my self-confidence and my daily happiness nearly as much as losing my hair. Not comparable really, but when I was 21 I got a pretty nasty gash above my eye playing rugby. 17 stitches and left a noticeable scar. I remember my Dad saying, ‘I’m amazed you don’t care about that but you’re so concerned about losing your hair’. That’s because with my hair I look in the mirror and think- that’s me with a scar on my face. Without my hair I look in the mirror and think- that’s not me.

[Artista]

HELLO Recedoroy!!

Im glad that you arrived here my friend ...you WILL get GOOD advice from many as to how you must accept life-regardless of how much hair you have or dont have!
To be very objective and fair to you,
Being that you are only 25 years old, I can understand why you were so emotionally effected by hairloss.
By the mid' to the late 20s,The last part of the brain that GROWS is the neocortex which is what gives you good FORESIGHT , the ABILITY to predict the consequences of your actions.

Your at that age now where your neocortex may finally have been fully grown.
Maybe not.
Acceptance of realities and using commonsense is HEALTHY for everyone.

Recedoroy if there is someone you know that would criticize you or JUDGE you by the amount of hair on your head, then that person is the one with ISSUES!
Not you.

You want to and you need to ENJOY your life...REGARDLESS.

Now, I have no doubts that there will be an innovative and new hairloss treatment coming your way
(maybe even a cure) but you cannot focus on that and hold yourself back from happiness because of waiting.

Just wanted to let you know that I have been using Finasteride for almost 2 years now without any BAD side effects. NONE!
My hair is continuing to improve.
Im about a NW5 and I am accepting of that!
I was going to shave my head back in 2013 because my hairloss was much more so than it is now.
I was given good advice to use/try out Finasteride. When I spoke with my doctor , he told me of over 100 of his patients that he had prescribed Fin' to.
None had experienced bad sides' from it. All have had positive results,,some minor some major!
I hate my hairloss but I am ACCEPTING of it ...
Live your life Rec' and stick around here with us.
You will be A-OK !!