My 7 Month Journey to Recovery: Advice to Those Struggling

Yo everybody, not that I am surprised this shakes out this way but a lot of this subreddit is highly highly negative and can give people the impression that it is really common to never see the end of this. I am not blaming anyone for posting negative stuff, hell, I've been one of them, and the folks who have suffered with this for years truly deserve as much comfort as they can get. Upon making this observation, I told myself that when I'm close to being better, I would make a post and support the bros going through this and give a bit of hope?

My PFS story started back in March of this year. I'm a 26-year-old man for context who started experiencing ED and never even knew ED was a side effect of Fin. Never did much research and thought about it. Started with Him's (Fin distributor) about 6 months before that. I realized around halfway through April that fin was the cause and stopped taking it. I was dead from the waist down for about two weeks, then the week of April 30th, I had a FLOOD of testosterone and was not just better, but way above my baseline. After this week, boom, I crashed and stayed that way for all of May. I had foggy brain, my balls hurt and shrunk, and I had no sexual desire whatsoever. I also experienced more depression than I have ever felt. I have had worse things happen to me in my life but this was the only time I had felt actually suicidal. Lacking testosterone fucks with you in ways I could've never imagined.

By the end of May, my balls started to hurt like a motherfucker. Like I got kicked really hard a few days prior...but I was excited about this. Something was finally happening to my dead dick! They grew to normal size. By mid-June, I was basically 80% again and it was great. However, I fucked up and didn't realize Minoxidil also causes crashes. I started taking some and then boom, dead again. I never got to the same level of completely dead but it wasn't great. I stopped taking minoxidil about 16 weeks ago now and I have felt mentally normal for the past month. The worst part of the last few weeks has been the amount of fluctuations. I had daily fluctuations so I would tell my Fiancee "Hey I think I can tonight" and then wouldn't be able to later lol. It sucks day to day but from a recovery standpoint, frequent fluctuations are fantastic. Hold on to that hope if you relate to that or have experienced the same thing. Now I've been good for about 2/3 weeks. I am still fluctuating but the difference is I can have sex when I'm on a downturn. I have no foggy brain, I can sometimes have sex twice in a day which was a lot for me even before all of this. I feel very stable. Overall a 6 month or so recovery process for me. Probably 7-8 before I feel confident closing this chapter of my life for good and I don't worry about little things causing crashes.

Now, for the meat of this post. I want to give my 2 cents and some advice. Feel free to PM me if you have specific questions.

• PAY ATTENTION TO OVERALL TRENDS! Focusing on the day to day is pointless and heartbreaking at points. Look at your recovery from a much wider lense. It truly is a two steps forward one step back sort of recovery process so viewing everything this way can help manage your emotions.
• Emotional Management is the most difficult but important part of this process. You are going through a massive hormonal fluctuation right now. You're going to get unreasonably angry compared to your baseline when you are flooded with testosterone, and then you will be unreasonably depressed compared to your baseline when the DHT floods your system and aggressively absorbs all your testosterone. I see so many posts on here from people thinking their life is over. IT'S NOT. Don't blow your life up and limit your experiences because of this damn medicine. Live life, have fun, take care of yourself, and the rest will fall into place. It's easy for me to say now, and I know how fuckin hard it is, but just know that your most depressed moments right now aren't you. It's this poison. Recognize it and keep pushing.
• SLEEP is the silver bullet. There are a lot of people suggesting a lot of different things but sleep is ultimately how your hormones regulate. It's how your body heals. Sleep 10 hours a day if you can. Sleep more...KEEP SLEEPING. Mitigating stress is also a silver bullet here and helped me a lot. The week I noticed my biggest shift towards recovery was a week I got out of my toxic job and got an awesome new one and I was on vacation. It might be easy for me to say this is coincidental and God's way of tipping the scale in my favor, but realistically it isn't. I got lucky and lost a lot of stress and gained some happy moments, which likely helped tremendously. Stress is often caused by work and our obligations though so truthfully, this is hard to mitigate. Just do your best with what's in front of you.
• Alcohol, weed, and nicotine won't prevent recovery but they will slow it down. A lot of people harp on this and while I agree, it's worth it to limit it, I didn't find too much of a difference either way. When I was near the end of my recovery, sometimes alcohol and weed helped? It doesn't help biologically but it helps with anxiety. As you get closer to recovery, anxiety is a difficult but understandable tribulation you're about to go through. Sex has become a negative thing in your life for months(years?) so sometimes substances can help even more than harm. At least it did for me, and of course, in extreme moderation.
• Use Chatgpt to track your recovery. Not much to add here, it's just that the new memory feature is really awesome for keeping track of exactly when and how you were feeling a particular day. This helps you track overall trends.
• Your good times are not your baseline...especially if you're early in the recovery period. Think of it logically, the big fuckery with recovery is your body figuring out the DHT and Testosterone balance. If you are dead one day and can fuck like a horse the next day, fucking like a horse is not your baseline. In fact, if you took fin for a long time before you're recovery you might have to dig deep to remember what your baseline is. Fin for a lot of folks makes you super horny at first before causing this. I remember needing to beat my meat twice a day when I started. I don't mean to disappoint, but when your body is stable and recovering, you're likely going to be at a more middle-ground area than you might expect. This is why anxiety mitigation is important. You just experienced something truly traumatic, it's reasonable to experience some anxiety-induced ED near the end of recovery. If you are experiencing a massive rush and you're all of a sudden way way better than you thought you would be, odds are it is too good to be true and you will be crashing. This disorder is not a "I woke up one day and I was cured" sort of thing. You will notice it over time.
• My thoughts on Masturbation: masturbation is thrown around a lot and I do think it is pretty important to your recovery. Especially early on. When your dick is dead dead, watch porn and do something. Porn is never healthy but fuck it, you need to get blood flowing there to prevent issues later on. It doesn't matter if it takes 20 minutes to get hard and you're just stroking, get it going. I don't know if it helps biologically but it does help you measure where you are. As you recover, time yourself and how long it takes to get hard. Time how long you keep the erection after you stop any stimulation. You should be able to keep it for at least 2-3 minutes or so without any stimulation or sexual thought. This is the last part to fall into place during recovery. Stop watching porn as you notice your horniness levels return. Start edging more instead of finishing.
• Last but definitely not least, be careful as hell with supplements and everything you are putting in your body. It's crazy to me how often people talk about supplements here. On one hand, I get it and if it helped you, go you. I just find the risk far far greater than the potential reward. Fish oil caused crashes for me for gods sake. We all say stuff like "how could fin even get passed regulations?" and then we turn around and assume a pill with no regulatory body will solve everything for us. The only supplements I would even consider would be magnesium and ashwagandha. I don't know much about ashwagandha but it helps with anxiety supposedly so I can understand it helping. I would still approach even these ones with extreme caution. Approach anything you put in your body with extreme caution. Food, 5ar inhibitors like tea tree oil, medicines, biotin, everything. Your body won't be hypersensitive forever but I'm keeping super clean off most shit for the next year just to be sure.

All this stuff is super difficult but I truly hope that this helps at least one person. Best of luck to all of you in your recovery.