My delayed intro

[Blackout]

Well, I'll try to make it simple, but still will be long. I never made an introduction in the other forum and barely posted two or three messages -with another username- because I have a severe form of social anxiety that prevents me of even participating in a forum -exposing me to being judged even in this way-. And that same SA -together with a previous hatred for my own biological nature, with its origins on school bullying and the ways that I was brought up by my overprotective and overconservative mother- was responsible for ruining my love and sex life before the final SSRI knock out. At 28 -in 2010- I didn't even know the feeling of a kiss, and didn't know the sound of the words "I love you". Nothing. Much less the sexual act by itself. It didn't matter that I'm -or was- good looking and that some girls tried their chances with me. First my prejudices, then my fears, now my neuroendocrine damage. I've always lived a nightmare, and PSSD only came to transform my life into a limbo inside the same nightmare.

So, I entered the most severe episode of my chronic depression in mid-late 2010. Having lost my mind -I will save the details- I decided to abuse mesterolone when in reality I didn't need to take it in the first place. I took it as a candy, not even doing a previous research of its properties and the AAS use in general terms. As a result my HPT axis collapsed, and my depression worsened before I did the necessary research in order to repair the damage. I didn't knew then, but I suppose that having stopped my testosterone production completely -after 2 and a half weeks of 4 x 25 mg pills per day- my dopaminergic system became altered, and if my depression initially had the normal serotonergic factor, it converted into a dual serotonergic and dopaminergic matter. That is my guess.

I became suicidal, and began to collect phenobarbital pills in order to accomplish my goal. But still was persuaded by my inner voice to go for help one last time. I was prescribed Lexapro, but instead, due to its high cost and the fact that I was spending a lot of money in a Post Cycle Therapy, i decided to try generic sertraline, the only antidepressive that proved to be useless -but only useless- for me in the past. On other separate occasions I tried fluoxetine (1999-2000), paroxetine (2004) and venlafaxine (2006) and they all did wonders for me, but sertraline (2009) did absolutely nothing. I began to take it again -50 mg daily- in february 2011, when my sexual function and my sex drive were recovering after my mesterolone misuse -but still were below my average.

After about a couple of weeks of therapy -poisoning- my suicidal thoughts stopped, together with my fountains of crying spells. But I didn't fell happy as with the other antidepressive rounds. I felt a very notorious zombi like state. And that zombi like state made me ignore the fact that my sexual recovery halted and reverted again. Only that this time it was much deeper. No sex drive and full ED, but this time there was also genital numbing. And I didn't note any of those symptoms, until it was too late, in October. Life mocked me. In August, after 29 years of forced celibate, I met a girl from a spanish-spoken social anxiety forum. And by October she proposed to me. She wanted me to become her boyfriend, and she wanted to have sex. It was then when the true nightmare began.

I would have killed -not literal- in order to discover the physical sensations that I longed to know. And when we began cuddling and when she fulfilled my dream of feeling a girl's lips against mine, there was nothing special. I felt nothing in the skin. No physical or psychological reaction. There was only a very mild increase on the bloodflow of my dick, but not enough to produce an erection. Anyway I wasn't scared at that time. Then a few days later we tried sex for the first time, and to my dismay, I wasn't able to achieve enough hardness to put on a condom. And from then on, I will only be able to penetrate her 1 out of 4 times, but it was mechanical, pleasureless, and I have to struggle in order to maintain a short lived semi erection.

I went to check my hormones and only then I discovered that my recovery after mesterolone had reverted. I was barely producing testosterone. I told her about my 2010 error, and explained that those probably were still consequences and also told her that it would be arranged with the same PCT therapy that I followed at the beginning of the year, only for a longer time. She was supportive, after all she had a very low sex drive. But in the affective area, I rejected her proposal to become a formal couple. I didn't feel love towards her. She was everything I wanted in a girl, and I wasn't in love.

I stopped sertraline in October or November, still ignoring its role on what was happening to me. I didn't took into account that for about three weeks after stopping, I began to experience spontaneous semi erections for the first time in months. I attributed that to the new PCT working to solve the problem. It was not until January, when a new hormonal check up showed that the PCT was working, that I began to worry. My hormone levels were fine, but I still felt the same. Desperate, I decided to do a testosterone cycle -this time having researched enough about AAS use. But nothing happened, until a single night in mid February 2012, when I was woke up in midnight because I was horny as hell. For the first time in more than a year -since mesterolone- I felt the full urge to have sex, and my dick was as hard as it used to be back then. I was desperate to reach the morning and call my friend to ask her if we could met that day. But then I fell asleep again, and when I woke up in the morning, my sex drive and my erectyle function were vanished again. And that was the last time in my life when I felt a sexual urge and when I have a full blown erection with only mental stimulation.


I checked my hormones again, and they were as they are supposed to be during a testosterone cycle. That didn't make sense. So I went back to PCT and began searching here and there, everywhere on the internet in order to find some answer to that mystery. And I finally found my first PSSD topic in a bodybuilding forum. For the first time I learned that SSRI's caused sexual side effects. When I took fluoexetine, paroxetine and the first sertraline trial, I didn't experience any side effect, but I became aware that when I was on venlafaxine I became hypersexual during that short treatment. But now I was aware that 8 months on sertraline had fucked my brain. And still I had some hope, because I began to find that there were several treatments to revert SSRI sexual sides.

I began a long and hellish journey, clinging just to the hope that some ot those drugs or supplements would work. But they didn't. Not even a direct method to treat ED like alprostadil worked. Bupropion, dopamine agonists, agomelatine, piracetam and nearly all the anti PSSD empirical vademecum that I found mainly in this forum were useless. In fact -I'm not sure- my first experiments probably began to worsen my condition. Then, in January 2013, after a year full of experiments, out of nowhere I had a sudden partial recovery only on the mechanical part. For about two weeks I was able to maintain my hand-provoked erections for long enough to have some decent intercourse, but still I had no sex drive and my genital anesthesia made it pointless. The same with my low ejaculatory volume. Only orgasm had been, was and is the least affected part of my whole sexual response, but what's the use of being able to orgasm in this condition? My erectyle recovery faded. I returned to my PSSD baseline. Until I decided to try -in the absence of buspirone in my country- other 5-HT1A partial agonists -namely trazodone, ziprasidone and quetiapine, these two together with cabergoline in an attempt to block their antipsychotic properties-. And they killed completely what remained of my hopes. Before them I was able to at least feel blood flowing through my penis when I was about to have sex, even when there was no erection. But after taking them, even that vague sensation disappeared and my dick has felt totally dead since then -in mid 2013.

Today I barely, but barely can have sex. I can't wear condoms. I can't get enough hardness, and it fades after a minute or two, even with vigorous manual or vaginal stimulation. And nothing helps me. Nothing. I'm now convinced that my cognitive, affective and sexual post SSRI issues are permanent. Yes, I forgot to tell that my short term memory is now non existent, instead replaced by a dense brain fog. I never knew and will never know how does a woman touch feels in reality, when one is not poisoned. I now know that I will never regain even a small fraction of my once high libido, nor will have morning and night woods or friction ones. The only possible solution only to my ED would be a penile prothesis, but that is ruled out since I'll never be able to have so much money.

And all these years I still have been convinced that suicide is my only full relief. However there's some responsibility -which I save for me- which has been keeping me for doing it before it becomes mandatory. But there will come a momnt when even that responsibility will be of no help to stay alive.

Sorry for my negativity, but it isn't easy to be an unmanageable case that also is loaded with the frustration of having become castrated after a whole life where love and sex were negated for me for so many causes prior to sertraline. Now 32 years down the drain.

[Maldoror]

Welcome. Have you improved?

[Blackout]

As I have been saying, this year whatever remained of my sexual function -my sexuality was already dead- was totally annihilated, either by six months of taking T3 -which I wasn't aware is a postsynaptic 5-HT1A agonist-, and/or by a sudden worsening of my gastrointestinal function. It became clear to me that I got malabsorption -don't like to give details on this-, and I tried injecting B complex EOD. Didn't feel any difference -yet I continue with it, since I guess my severe worsening of loss of memory this year is due to B12 defficiency-. Tried 10 days cerebrolysin for this, and I guess it helped some 0.1% for my memory. It's too expensive, I can't be on that continuously.

Then I began trying Melanotan II and super B12 -methylcobalamin and hydroxycobalamin-. I just injected MT II twice. Side effects for me at very low doses were unbearable and I can't find what kind of symptoms were that: it produced something like palpitations inside my head, as if it was some form of intracranial hypertension. It was too scary. But after that second injection I began to have a sliiiiiiight improvement regarding erectile function -by slight I mean really slight-. But when combining with cialis it is back as it was at least a year ago. Cialis alone does nothing for me. But it wasn't Melanotan that helped, but the super B12 -the methylcobalamin fraction-, since I stopped Melanotan a couple of weeks ago and I still can have some erections.

However this is crappy, horrible. It is useless for me. My anhedonia and affective blunting is worse than ever, and my libido has remained dead, forever dead. This year has been a nightmare inside the nightmare, and I got to know how terrible the lack of emotions is, since my anxiety toppled during the first half of the year, yet I couldn't feel it, just perceive it, and the major depression that emerged sometime in May and has been growing is what really scares me, since I wished that I wanted my depression back if that brought back the good emotions too... But it turned to be that this major depression that I'm cursing is a depression without depression. Not a single tear. It's monstruos, how much I want to die, how bad I "feel", yet I can't feel it deep within myself, just perceive, being aware that I'm having an excruciating suffering. And that became patent, this depression took shape from the fact that I came to realize that I can't meet women anymore, since I met a very sexual one in April, and had to stop her before she made her move, telling the truth. And I felt like and object, but a useless, broken, defective object, which is worse than at least being a valued object. I can't handle this anymore.

A few months back I mentioned that I was going to try ECT. But my dear psychiatrist told me that in order to try that, I would be but on SSRIs for at least a month while being hospitalized. That's a full, absolute NOOO.

My life is ruined. So I'm going to try my last attempts to do something. And while I live, this will be my log.

First I want to ask you people. Who among you have tried steroids, which, how much and for how long? The fact that since I got PSSD in 2011, the only window regarding libido came in February 2012, a few months after stopping sertraline, still not knowing this was PSSD and so at the time I was injecting testosterone and taking proviron, it tells me that the studies where they say a mix of DHT and 17B estradiol could be helpful. During that very brief window, it was a single night where I woke up fully normal, with a raging libido and a solid rock hard erection. But it faded forever the next morning. I still continued with testosterone and proviron for some time, but didn't came back. However my testosterone dose was quite low, closer to an ordinary TRT. My proviron dose was 3 tablets per day, I guess.

So I ask everybody that has tried steroid cycles while having PSSD tell me their amounts and duration. I'm willing to try megadoses, don't matter how my organism pays for it.

Second, I want to try nystatin, but I still have doubts about its effects on ME, since my past experience with every 5-HT1A agonist that I tried was detrimental long term.

Third -but this looks more than unlikely-, I want to try either ibogaine or TMS. Both are terribly expensive for me, ibogaine at least in a ibogain clinic, since I could easily get it online, but it scares me overdosing due to the risk of a cardiac failure -I really would prefer cancer over this since I have many responsibilities that I can't leave just that sudden-. Also it appears that ibogaine is contraindicated for those with epilepsy and Crohn's. I have temporal lobe epilepsy, and I don't know if I have Crohn's, but it may be a possibility.

And last... I want to try antidepressants -after all I now have major depression, without depression-. Either mianserin with selegiline, or in the very last resort, doing what jaiho said about SSRI + TCA. I wasn't aware of this, but I already took more SRI since I have PSSD. In December 2012 I tried a large combo which included mianserin, but also there was atomoxetine. At the time I believed atomoxetine was a pure NRI, but it turned out to be a SNRI with weak affinity for the serotonin transporter. Other ingredients of my combo were cabergoline, granisetron, clomid, sertindole and I don't remember more. But after stopping that and beginning omega 3, levothyroxine, lamotrigine and memantine, I had a erectile function window -without libido- for maybe two or three weeks. I guessed it was this last combo, but now I think it was due to atomoxetine being a SRI and maybe it gave me a delayed partial recovery as those of you who have tried low dose SSRI.

A year later I tried mianserin -first alone then with bupropion, which by itself didn't do anything for me-, and that time mianserin helped my anhedonia somewhat, but nothing sexual. So I think that it hadn't anything to do with my window a year before. It maybe was atomoxetine. But I don't remember for how long did I take it. It was for less than a month, maybe a couple of weeks, and then after stopping, I began having that improvement with my erections, which despite no libido and genital numbness, were a marked relief in order to allow me to have sex.

If I had the money, I would try the steroid megadosing together with antidepressants. But I'm not able to do that.

So, for now, I want what I asked, comments or experiences about the use of high dose steroids while having PSSD.

[Bigmum]

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