Your hair looks like mine.
I started Propecia 1mg daily when I was 23 after spending about 3 months of researching my options online and constantly reading that I should "catch it early" by getting on Propecia and minoxidil ASAP.
My plan was to try that for a minimum of 12 months and then reassess the situation, with a hair transplant as the next option, depending on how my hairline responded.
After reading about the possibility of sexual sides I decided I'd try ejaculating just before taking my first tablet and then compare it 24 hours after. So 24 hours later I tried exactly the same and LITERALLY 0ml came out. It was literally like masturbating pre-puberty and it hadn't happened since I was probably 11 years old. It took me about 4 weeks to fully recover sexually from that single tablet.
That experience scared me away from Propecia until I drifted back into researching online again and kept reading about people whose sides disappeared after a few weeks or months.
I decided to try Propecia again and this time I didn't experience such dramatic sides, but they were present and built very slowly over time.
I'd say after about 6-9 months there was noticeable thickening all over. That's the thing with Propecia: you can get thickening all over your scalp. That's not possible with a hair transplant or minoxidil (unless you soak your entire scalp in it). The miniaturised hair on my hairline had thickened, but was still significantly lower in density compared the less miniaturised hair around it. I could only wear the classic hair style shown in every hair transplant before&after photo (combed back).
After about 18 months I came out of denial over the sides Propecia was causing me. Here's what I experienced:
- Sexual: No morning wood, decreased libido, very little ejaculate volume & erectile dysfunction. I'd say I was at about 30% of my pre-Propecia levels and had almost no interest in sex during this time.
- Physical: bacne cured, less greasy facial skin, scalp itch cured, decreased ability to gain muscle, some abdominal fat buildup, androgynous facial changes (probably due to changes in fat distribution), slight slowing and softening of beard hair growth & slower growing body hair.
- Mental: none that I was aware of.
I stopped Propecia about 5 months ago and still have most of those sides. The abdominal fat buildup went fairly quickly after stopping, but the others have only improved slightly.
It seemed to be starting to lose its effectiveness for my hair, anyway. In my experience it doesn't "hold what you've got" indefinitely. It just slows it down. My hair hasn't
dramatically thinned out yet since stopping, but who knows what will happen in 12 months.
I've got some free time next month where I'll be getting blood work to see what's wrong with me.
Long term, I feel my only options for my hair are probably a hair transplant and eventually a hair piece...