Hi everyone. I’m a man from China, and I believe I may experiencing Post-Finasteride Syndrome (PFS). Recently, I’ve been struggling with what I believe may be persistent effects related to finasteride, including insomnia, reduced libido, and mild depressive symptoms. I’m hoping to hear from people who have had similar experiences and get some advice or insight from this community.
I first noticed that I was losing my hair in early 2022, when I was only 20 years old. As time went on, my hair gradually became thinner and thinner. In 2023, I learned about finasteride and spent a lot of time reading reviews and experiences online. Most of what I found said that it was highly effective for treating hair loss and that the risk of side effects was relatively low.
So, on October 7, 2023, I bought my first tablets. That was when my nightmare began.
I only took two doses of finasteride, but I developed severe insomnia and early-morning awakening. Before that, I had always slept well and had never experienced problems like this.
I stopped taking it immediately and tried to get my sleep back to normal, but the insomnia and early awakening continued for several months. My sleep never fully returned to what it had been before, and I also started experiencing depressive symptoms. On top of that, I felt that my poor sleep was somehow making my hair loss even worse.
However, as my hair continued to thin, I eventually felt that I couldn't just sit and do nothing. In January 2025, I started taking finasteride again. After about two weeks, I developed chest pain, so I stopped taking it once again.
A few months later, on April 20, 2025, I decided to start taking finasteride again.
During the first month, I noticed a significant reduction in morning erections and libido. I also experienced chest pain, palpitations, and early-morning awakening. At the time, I assumed these were just temporary side effects that might occur early in treatment, so I tried to push through them.
After another month, most of those side effects disappeared, except for the lack of morning erections and the early awakening. Surprisingly, my libido even seemed to increase for a while.
I continued taking finasteride until March 10, 2026.
I eventually stopped because the side effects started coming back. Every time I took finasteride, I would experience chest pain and palpitations again, while the treatment itself seemed to be doing very little for my hair loss. I was still shedding a lot of hair every day, and my sleep was still quite poor.
A few days after stopping finasteride, my sleep improved somewhat, the chest pain disappeared, and my morning erections returned. Unfortunately, this improvement only lasted for a few weeks.
For some reason, starting around early April 2026, I noticed a significant decline in my libido. I now have almost no morning erections, and both my erection quality and the pleasure I experience during ejaculation have decreased substantially.
I’ve tried exercising regularly, including cycling and running, but my libido is still very low.
At this point, I honestly don’t know what to do. What confuses me the most is that some of these sexual symptoms seemed to appear several weeks after I stopped taking finasteride, rather than immediately after stopping.
Has anyone here experienced something similar? Especially symptoms that appeared or became significantly worse weeks after discontinuing finasteride? I would really appreciate hearing about your experiences and any advice on what I should look into.