Venting Continuing to live by accident

[finasteride_end]

The long story short is I have post-finasteride syndrome. I doubt the people who saw my first post months ago are still alive, but if they are, I apologise for drawing attention to myself yet again. I am in a strange predicament because my order of sodium nitrite got cancelled, since I can't figure out where people are getting it from. Anyway, for now I am trapped here with no way out.

Being this depressed is really strange. I simply don't feel anything strongly any more, neither joy nor sadness nor anger. I just feel numb and lifeless. Nothing I do gives me any sense of accomplishment. I can't jack off to porn because of my sexual dysfunction, and I have no motivation for work or study.

I am making half-hearted attempts to learn another language, because in theory I could emigrate and get better medical care in another EU country, but that would require me to give a shit. And I have stopped giving any. My efforts at writing are producing shitty, lifeless prose as well for the same reason.

I'm not going to recover, I don't think. It's not that there aren't treatments of some kind - I could get surgery and get a prosthetic penis fitted if I had enough money. But I can't imagine surviving the stress and pressure of a full time job. What for? I have spent my entire lifetime's worth of hope, motivation and energy since my last suicidal crisis in November. I don't have any fight left in me.

It's not even that my future life would be that bad, aside from having to stab my penis with a needle every time I want to get an erection. I just don't care to prove my worth anymore to people who don't care about me. The woman with sexual dysfunction that I met hooked up with her ex-boyfriend who does have a working penis, so I guess she doesn't need me anymore. So much for us supporting each other through this shit. People are all the same, really. Even women with the same condition as me prefer men who aren't broken.

I'm just tired of everything. I tried, and I failed. I'm not even sad. I just want to go to sleep because hoping for a better future is so exhausting. But until then, I guess I will continue with half-hearted gym sessions and stuff.

 

[timf]

Having difficulty with the physical side of relationships might allow one to explore non physical relationships. There are people for whom a kind word or a bit of encouragement can mean the world. There can be satisfaction in helping someone get a boost when they need it and it might be worthwhile to explore what you could accomplish in that direction.

 

[Vacuous]

There is no conclusive evidence that finasteride causes side effects that persist beyond the drug leaving your system. Given the fact that you're on a forum like this, and you've written what you have, I think it's more than fair to conclude that your mental health is significantly impairing your judgement.

I am not here to deny your experience of these symptoms, however, but your personal experience doesn't automatically give you free reign to make leaps as to the causes of your symptoms, especially when the evidence is flimsy.

The only certainty worth highlighting about PFS is that it remains highly controversial and ill-defined. This lack of evidence isn't even required in order to acknowledge that it isn't wise or healthy to hinge all of your problems on a drug. This is the kind of thinking that denotes a psychological pitfall that simplifies problems, through, namely, attributing everything going wrong in a situation to a sole cause. It is incredibly easy to think this way, especially paired with a predisposition towards problem magnification, but I believe you are strong enough to overcome this dangerous thought pattern, in place of a healthier, more hopeful, truth-grounded one.

What's clear is that your health problems are real--mental and, possibly, physical--and that, most importantly, there are steps you can take to address them, which can be achieved through ignoring the doom that characterizes the PFS community. You're not hopeless. Your symptoms haven't stripped you of your lifeforce. And there's a future better than the now; you just have to resist the urge towards catastrophizing in order to visualize it and make it a reality.