finasteride is a drug that is rife with problems because doctors and even the company that produces it seems to have no reasonable f*****g idea as to how to prescribe it to people without a potentially high risk of doing harm.
Thing is I was kind of chubby when I was 15-16 I already know that my estrogen was pretty high, but I had extremely thick hair. I'd rather gamble on putting myself back in that hormonal state in relative terms and then tweaking everything to put both my physiology and hormonal chemistry all in some kind of relative agreement with one another that I find acceptable.
finasteride is just... I'm sure it has potential but until the company that makes it puts more money into research and makes that information public, I won't trust it. I'd rather take cyproterone or bica than take finasteride. finasteride made me feel like garbage and the curve of efficacy is really really steep, like you need to get down under a 0.5 mg for it to start being dramatically less effective, and taking 1mg is about as effective as taking 4mg in terms of what it's going to do (if anything at all).
What taking 4mg will do is overload your tissues with metabolites of the drug and possibly cause serious harm over the course of many months.
Ironically enough hormones are safer in my opinion, until a better and more importantly PUBLIC understanding of the parameters of finasteride are disclosed.
If merck or whatever wants to save this drug, they need to be up front and honest about how it really works and how it can best be applied and who if anyone shouldn't use it at all.
Not to mention, and I'll put my conspiracy hat on for this one:
I honestly believe the manufacturer of finasteride hires people to discredit critics and shill the drug on platforms such as youtube and in places like this, and that's just f*****g dirty considering what the drug is capable of. Put that money toward research and be honest about what it does, there will still likely be many men who will want to take it but we should be entering an age where disclosure about drugs and autonomy to use them should be accounted for.