I Got My Hair Back, Got Lazy And Now Back To Square One

[stichguy]

My hair loss journey begins in 2014 (24), my hair was slowly getting worse and worse and it wasn't until I took an actual photo of my head (The before pic on the far left) that I realized I need to take action asap. I did some research and eventually settled on 5% minocidil and 1mg finasteride daily. And I made sure to never miss a day.

I was seeing great results and experienced no side effects, as you can see from the after photo, in just over 3 months I had almost regained a full head of hair and I thought I conquered it.

I continued this regimen for a few more months before I started getting lazy. Minoxidil changed to needing a prescription and I started slacking and taking it every other day and then completely stopped taking it in 2016. My hair was still there but I never took any photos but it might have been thinner. I still continued the finasteride until that prescription changed to a generic 5mg that I needed to cut into 4. Cutting the pills would often make me completely forgot to take them everyday and I went months taking it here and there.

People starting commenting on my head saying I was going bald and I thought I would start minoxidil again. this is in 2017 and it did not go well. I had no problems with Minoxidil in 2014 and when I took it last year, I started getting severe face swelling, to the point I looked deformed with only a few days of use. I immediately stopped and face recovered. I thought I could have possibly got a bad brand because I got it online so I got the original brand I used and the exact same thing happened, within 1 day normally my face will swell and get extremely dry on my cheeks and under my eyes.

This brings me to now, July 2018. I took a photo yesterday and it looks like I have digressed back to where I was in 2014 (pic below)

I have decided to take 2.5mg of the generic finasteride (I think I should go back to the original 1mg ones, they seemed more effective than this generic). I am not going to miss a single day of the pills and will hopefully see some regrowth or less loss in monthly update pics. I am also contemplating getting a Derma roller.

Can anyone recommend anything else and provide any feedback on why I suddenly react so badly to minoxidil when I used to be perfectly fine with it.