My 8 Year Plan

[Fixed by 35]

I have read countless blogs and articles about the side effects of finasteride, the unknown dangers of dutasteride, the uselessness of herbal remedies and, worst of all, a lot of nonsense about learning to accept baldness and shaving the lot off. I think all of this, in this day and age, is not only defeatist nonsense but also a dangerous route to embark upon.

First, a bit about me. I'm 27 and I began losing my hair some time around the age of 19 or 20. I suffered a huge telogen effluvium when I was 19 and receding temples began to become prominent by 20. My remaining hair also became much more dry, kinked and uncontrollable thereafter. Since that time I have lost further hair at only a very slow rate but without intervention a Norwood VII is pretty inevitable by 60 (my father had a similar experience and is currently a Norwood Va at 50). I absolutely detest my appearance almost as much as I would detest my appearance with a shaved head, but I have never made any effort to 'cover up' because that would look even worse (though not as bad as a shaved head - I should point out I really really detest this look).

I think I would have been more accepting of hair loss if it was the one troublesome thing I have had to deal with in life. The trouble is I've gone through my whole life always being the most unlucky person within my group of friends. If something bad is statistically going to happen, it always happens to me. Indeed, should I ever grow my hair back, perhaps I should be concerned about what will happen next. Losing a limb perhaps, or an eye?

Anyway, enough negativity, I have now decided that I will have a full head of hair by 35, or I will die trying. As far as I see it, I have three choices in this life:

1) Living another 50 years with a look I detest, experiencing continued prejudice, unable to make a good first impression, unable to express my personality and going through the continued psychological changes that baldness causes.

2) Take extreme risks, such as taking dutasteride at high levels despite there being no testing of its safety, in an effort to get the look I want. This will either result in:

a) A full head of hair.
b) Death.

But at least I would have tried. It's worth taking the odd risk in life to get what you want. I'm prepared to be every doctor's guinea pig and every bald person's danger man to fight this horrible affliction.

Before you say I'm mad and need to learn acceptance, let me just say this. Hair loss stole my personality at 20. It has made me less confident; more introvert; more reclusive; more irritable; more negative towards others and more docile. If I continue to lose hair, all of these negative personality traits will get worse. To me, acceptance and a shaved head would actually be nothing more than an expression of my new, negative personality. It would mean giving up and succombing to a life I have no particular interest in living, where even the last fight, this fight, had been drawn out of me. Acceptance does not just mean accepting a loss of hair, it means accepting that you must be second best, that you have no right to look good and worst of all it means accepting a more introverted personality because like it or not this does not go away. You don't just lose your youth to hairloss then later learn to accept it on your terms, you learn to accept it on society's terms which are not favourable. The day I shave my head is the day I expect to then turn the razor on my wrists.

So, I have eight years to do something about this and I'm going to do it all. I'm going to start taking dutasteride at 0.5mg per day and will increase dosage after 6 months if results aren't visable; I'm going to take a mega load of saw palmetto and beta sitosterol and I'm going to use revivogen which, whilst often derided, is full of natural DHT blockers, in particular saw palmetto and beta sitosterol which I think will be beneficial topically (the shampoo is also much nicer than the cheap commercial rubbish like Pantene and L'Oreal). I won't use minoxidil simply because it's a load of old rubbish.

I'm going to put myself forward for every clinical trial going. I'll use histogen's product when it is available; I'm invested in Aderans and I support TRX-2.

At 34 I'll have a hair transplant and....

If none of that works, I plan to move to the outback of Australia or somewhere else equally remote to become a recluse, until I'm blessed by the good grace of a terminal illness.

[clee984]

I like you.

[thejack]

Thats the exact same mentality I have!! You'll probably find some dont agree but I'd rather die than fade away.. Baldness drains some peoples confidence so much in turn draining their personality therefore becoming a nobody. Whats the point in existing as a shadow of the person you could have been? Hope your plan all works out for you man . If mine fails, see ya in the outback haha

[Fixed by 35]

You're too kind.

What too many people forget to say is that acceptance is not the last stage of the balding process, except for men who look like Vin Diesel. Most men don't look like Vin Diesel.

Oddly, a lot of people seem to think hair is just about being attractive. The thing with me is that I was ugly with hair and ugly without it. Just like 99.9% of the population. It's just that with it, I could at least express my personality! Ugliness never bothered me, so I was initially surprised at how much the hair loss did. I think maybe it's the fact that I've always thought that it's okay to be ugly as long as you don't look like a chav or a convict. The shaved head is a chav/convict look.

Some people have tried to convince me bald can look respectable but it can't. The list of celebrities they rattle off to convince me proves my point, not theirs! Except maybe Heston Blumenthal, but he's not actually balding.

The reality is that after 'acceptance' comes 'what now.' I went through a process of acceptance with very short hair. Guess what happened next? Once you let blogs brainwash you into thinking bald is cool or acceptable, you start to get on with your life. Then it suddenly dawns on you. The men with shaved heads at work are not in positions of responsibility unless they are exceptional; lots of loud mouthed idiots with hair get to the top without trying. You realise you were right all along; hair is socially very important. For a lot of men, they've let their follicles died and they're finished.

I'm not and I do not intend to let it happen to me.

[Fixed by 35]

Has anyone not noticed on most company websites that their career page has a picture of a man with stupid amounts of hair? If you're bald, you can still succeed, but you will not have the same life chances as someone with hair. Whereas they can walk into any job, you can only walk into jobs with companies who are not image conscious. Or, in other words, companies that are fewer and far between every single day.

No one cares about abilities these days. You don't actually have to be that good at something to succeed at it these days; skills are long since dead in the entrepreneurial, service economy. Intellect is treated with suspicion and envy rather than fascination. Perception is everything, so hair matters.

Bald men are condemned to be the background figure. Actually, there's often a token bald man on those career websites. Looking considerably older than his peers, he's the one still doing the same job he was doing 10 years ago whilst his younger, hirsuit colleague is his manager in the picture!

The fact is you can be the most confident person in the world. But the truth is you will be forced into the background if you are bald whether you like it or not.

[StayStrongMen]

Woah there buddy! I am going to have to disagree with a lot of what you said.

First of all, I'd take shaved head over a Norwood VII any day of the week. This is just my opinion but I think it looks 10x better and many girls and guys I talk to tend to agree. The exception is if you have an odd-shaped head....but to say that shaving your head equals giving up on life is RIDICULOUS! I often see shaved men on the street who look real handsome. (I'm straight and I have no problem saying that ) If this wasn't the case, then the people who choose to shaved their hair down to the skin, that actually have hair, wouldn't be doing so.


2nd of all, without a HT, you aren't going to miraculously grow that hair back. You seem very educated on hair loss based on what you said in your post. Hairloss happens practically to everyone, but at different rates of progression and different times of our lives. I started losing my hair pretty fast at 20 as well. If the hairloss is agressive, you and I both know that overdosing on every Hairloss treatment in the world isn't going to take us to a Norwood I or II.

And that sucks. I hear you. It defiinitely makes a serious psychological impact. Close friends making comments, girls not running up to you...I'm the same boat. It was terrible.

I completely disagree about the hair = people with power comment. If I really thought this was true, I'd buy a quality wig, and I'd be happy. Yeah there's some exceptions (running for president, the entertainment industry), but again, I'd buy a wig if I wanted to go that route.

I do agree that people with hair may have it easier, and people who are the best looking may have it easier. You say hair matters. While this is true, you say it as if it's the ONLY THING THAT MATTERS. There' other ways you can be attractive! Good personality & sense of humor, great body...these things do get you the jobs at interviews!

You may be thinking "I wish this guy would shut up, that's what everyone says and it's not true." I'm living proof my man! In my opinion, confidence is the main driver of a successful and happy life, not good looks. My current gf chose me over a very handsome man but she saw right through those good looks and realized he was a douche, and that I was a keeper

YOU GOT TO ADAPT MY MAN! YOU GOTTA MOVE ON! I've been thriving off a new-born personality since my hairloss became more agressive. I've lost a ton of fat and put on a ton of muscle. It's made me into a better person! If someone makes a comment about my lack of hair, I love it. I thrive off of it. I get in their head that having hair sucks lol!

I'm sorry to hear about your lifetime of bad luck. But looking at your life in such a negative light is not the way to go. If you act like your the f'n man, people will start treating you like your the f'n man. You can laugh at me but this is 100% fact. It seems to be that you're confidence was shattered when you lost your hair (like the rest of us). You need to find a way to get that confidence back.

Keep fighting hairloss, but please don't do the things you say you're going to do. You claim that you're permanently in the background due to your baldness. That's how YOU see it. Carry yourself in a confident manner and I GUARANTEE you will see some changes.

By the time you're 35 I have a hunch you're not going to care that much about your hair anyway.

[Fixed by 35]

Okay, just a quick response for now:

1) People who choose to shave their heads but have hair are chavs. They do it to look like David Beckham. A shaved head does look better than a Norwood VII, but it doesn't look that much better and frankly it would be far too much effort to spend 30 minutes every single day shaving my head to go from looking very bad to just bad.

2) I know I need a HT. Planning to do so at 34, in seven years time. If my family hairline is anything to go by, I expect it will be a very successful procedure. I'm currently a Norwood 3a. Don't ask me how, I lost hair in the first year and it's hardly changed in the last six.

3) I actually wanted to go into politics. I was probably made bald by fate to stop me doing it, because I'd be an awful politician!

4) Hair mattered to me because I don't have a strong personality or a good sense of humour. Looking average helped a lot. Now I have absolutely no positive traits whatsoever. The only jobs I've succeeded at getting in the last four years were with bald or balding interviewers. I failed every interview with people with hair. Figure that one out!

5) Confidence is great. I have some about my abilities but I'm also a realist. People's attitudes towards me changed when I lost my hair and a big gulf grew between what my abilities were and what they were perceived to be. Guess what? I spend all day doing a crap, unchallenging job because an idiot with hair makes a better impression than me.

6) I am not spending 50 or 60 years as a bald man. I have no interest in playing the hand of cards I've been dealt. The only game I want to play is a risky one. If I fail, I quit. I won't do anything stupid like kill myself, but I will definitely stop doing anything to prolong my life. I see a life of fatty foods, excessive alcohol and no exercise ahead! Hair by 35 or a huge binge followed by a fatal heart attack by 36. That's my plan!

[recedo]

come on mate, reading this makes me want to shave my head and u watch what i achieve. there's loads of balding guys, who've done what they wanted to, jason statham, goldie, mitchell bros, rooney and tons more. It sucks going bald and i'm just about to try minox, fin and nizoral, but if they don't work i will just shave it off and move on. THERE'S MORE TO LIFE THAN HAIR!!!!
peace.

[Fixed by 35]

Baldness only started bothering me when I started getting treated differently by others. I went from high flier to career stagnation from the year it started to seven years later. That's not through lack of hard work or results either.

I get overlooked at work all the time by hairy idiots and I've grown sick of it. The previous company I worked for, they did a photo shoot to market the company - out of the 8 employees, guess who the only one without any photos on the website was?

[hdude46]

Listen man,

Everyone on here has been affected by hairloss and are seeking remedies to treat it. It is very very hard to deal with. With that said, I feel sorry for people like you with this outlook on life. If the be all end all to your existence is hair then u are an empty person. You are being treated differently b/c u act differently. Yes, some of that is b/c u lost hair, but if u are counting on this to get you to succeed in life then i dont really know what to say to you. I have more than a few friends who are thinning too and no one treats them any differently. They are still outgoing, still get girls, good jobs, ect. Most men will loose some hair in their life. Its harder to accept now but as I look at my dads friends very view of them have a 'full head of hair'.

I would encourage you to work on your self esteem issues b/c hair is not the only thing holding u back whether u believe that or not. It does suck as Im dealing with it myslef at a young age (almost 26 and a nw3), but im taking proscar and doing what i can to slow the process. my dad is a nw1 and so are my brothers. no relatives are too bald so i dont think i'll get to a nw 6 or 7 knock on wood but its still hard. however u have one life to life and if u let this get in the wasy u will regret it when u are much older.