Stephen

Getting genital numbness at 23 from just 2 doses of Fluoxetine and tragically not making the link resulted in taking SSRIs again years later that caused #PSSD. The best years of my life and my future have been destroyed. I've effectively been raped by the pHARMaceutical industry.

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@i_r_wilson Same, mate- getting to a point where to be honest I feel that my own personal battle can only end in one of two options: acceptance or death, but I'm struggling to find the strength to reach either outcome.

I realise I'm not going to get anything I want in life. I have one final wish. Let me live to see SSRIs banned and a major overhaul of how medical science is practised. Please just let me have this one thing...

@Faun_Dark @PSSD_sufferer Same here. I also used to work as a creative educator and used to love painting and making things. Now it feels more like a hassle than a passion.

Having #PSSD and damage from psych meds as a creative, Im looking at my personal art and my graphics for work and having absolutely no idea how in the hell I did any of it anymore... I used to TEACH art to people. I thought it all the time. Now my mind is blank. This is such hell

@8ronteroc @PieAreSqwared Look up #PSSD or #PFS and you will find your answer.

@PieAreSqwared Difficult topic. I'm wondering how you come up with that. What harms caused by ADs (incl. AD withdrawal) make you think suicide was an option?

One thing SSRIs taught me is that suicide can sometimes be your only option. Whenever I heard someone committing suicide, I’d say that’s weak or selfish etc. but after the harms SSRIs have caused me, I now understand why people choose to opt out.

@atomicaceso @PieAreSqwared I agree. Whenever someone warns me that they might have to tell the police if I'm "a danger" to myself, they're essentially downplaying my suffering and trying to remove my right to choose.

@PieAreSqwared My views on suicide changed so much from the psychiatric harm experience. I really believe it should be easily accessible, humane and we should be allowed to tell people when our last day is so we can plan and say goodbye. Dignity.

@omityah @PieAreSqwared They create the chemical imbalances that the people who are told by doctors that they have chemical imbalances, didn't actually have to begin with.

@PieAreSqwared Different ssris work differently. Some may work for you some may not. Ssris aren't happy pills. The clear your cognition. Imagine that u are in a deep dark jungle. Ssris act as torch. You still have to walk to clear the jungle. Ssris help you in finding way out

Sometimes it just hits me like a wave of panic that I might never feel romantic love and have a sexual relationship again because of #PSSD. Tonight is one of those times. Please think twice and do your homework before considering ever taking #SSRIs.

@Unstoppable218 Main change I really notice is change in skin tone and texture. Noticed this also in myself; I used to have oily skin and my hair would get greasy if I didn't wash it in two days. Now both my hair and skin feel dry and coarse.

I can’t believe the first two photos were taken only about four years ago. I was a completely different man then. It really wasn’t that long ago, but it feels like a lifetime. Photo 1: March 2021 – Miami Beach (about 2 months into taking Finasteride) - Still looked like myself - full face, strong structure, vibrant expression. I was already on the drug, but you’d never know it. I looked alive. Photo 2: June 2021 (6 months into taking Finasteride) - The facial structure hadn’t changed, but something had shifted beneath the surface. I was battling brain fog, emotional flatness, slurred speech, and cognitive issues I couldn’t explain. I looked fine, but I didn’t feel like me anymore. Photo 3: September 2022 (6 months off Finasteride) - This is where the collapse became visible. My jaw had weakened. My midface had hollowed. I looked softer - more boyish, less grounded. My beard was thinning and becoming lighter, and my hair loss had accelerated to a level worse than it had ever been before, losing its density, sheen, and becoming dry and straw-like. The light in my eyes was dimming. The emotional detachment I’d felt internally was now showing externally. Photo 4: August 2023 (over a year off Finasteride) - Gaunt. Lifeless. Colorless. The masculine structure is gone. My face looks drained and unfamiliar. There’s a deadness in my eyes that says more than words ever could. These changes didn’t set in while I was on the drug — they began after I stopped. And they unfolded fast. Every photo you see here is within a span of just two years. This is Post-Finasteride Syndrome. Not aging. Not lighting. Not a beard. Not the angle. This is what happens when a drug disrupts your androgen signaling, fractures your nervous system, and separates you from your sense of self.

@i_r_wilson @PieAreSqwared Same as me, just feels that my life has been split into two halves; before and after PSSD. The person I perceive myself to be based on thinking about life experiences from either side of developing this affliction, seem totally unrelated to each other.

I hate the person antidepressants turned me into. I want the old me back, but he is long dead and gone.

@PieAreSqwared @samziz @Chitailova @AlistairHill4 @Marcisissy Good stuff- I also got a diagnosis, from NHS South Lanarkshire. It's slowly gaining momentum, one day we will be undeniable to these ignoramuses

@Stephen761004 @samziz @Chitailova @AlistairHill4 @Marcisissy The guy you’re talking to is a heroin addict btw. Also, after this consultation I got a PSSD diagnosis from the NHS so the heroin addict doesn’t have a clue what he’s saying 😂 tell him to shoot a vein, because he blocked me

The growing anti-psychiatry campaign on this platform concerns me deeply. By "anti-psychiatry," I mean a movement that outright rejects psychiatry as a legitimate medical field, often dismissing its evidence-based practices (e.g., the 2018 Lancet Psychiatry meta-analysis showing 60-70% benefit for moderate to severe depression) and advocating against all medication, regardless of individual need. This rhetoric brings everyone down—patients seeking help, doctors with medical degrees, psychiatrists, critical psychiatrists, and those who rely on treatment to live well. Psychiatry has its flaws—historical over-medicalization and past abuses, like those critiqued by Thomas Szasz in the 1970s, are valid concerns. Yet, it remains a recognized branch of medicine, with most psychiatrists striving to help. There’s nothing wrong with taking a pill to feel better or to thrive, as supported by my own experience and data from a 2023 JAMA Psychiatry study on tailored treatments. Let’s move beyond blanket rejection and focus on compassionate, individualized care for all.

@samziz @PieAreSqwared @Chitailova @AlistairHill4 @Marcisissy You obviously don't suffer with PSSD or PFS. Lucky you

@Stephen761004 @PieAreSqwared @Chitailova @AlistairHill4 @Marcisissy Oh no really? What is the time and place? In 50 years, at his funeral? “He wasted his whole life trying to get doctors to agree there was something wrong with him. Perhaps there wasn’t. Rest in peace.”

@samziz @PieAreSqwared @Chitailova @AlistairHill4 @Marcisissy There is a time and a place to play devil's advocate... this is not that time.

@Stephen761004 @PieAreSqwared @Chitailova @AlistairHill4 @Marcisissy Or possibly, POSSIBLY, the doctors are right and this guy is a hypochondriac and would do better to accept his error, accept that one can receive support for any lunatic belief on the internet and that that doesn’t mean one is right, and then get on with his life.

@PieAreSqwared @Chitailova @AlistairHill4 @Marcisissy Tunnel-visioned, arrogant bastards

@Chitailova @AlistairHill4 @Marcisissy Here's one of many, again from UCLH. Supposedly the 2nd best hospital in the world:

The fact that #PSSD has not garnered the level of recognition it should have by now can in part be attributed to the misconception that if everything looks OK on the surface, nothing's wrong. PSSD is very real, debilitating, devastating, and as much a hidden illness as any other.

I don’t think you can use SSRIs for “chemical castration” one minute and deny PSSD the next.

#SSRIs: putting the HARM in #Pharmaceuticals.

@Luisa00715528 Fuck this condition and fuck all those who turn their backs on those of us suffering. The strength required to get through each day will probably never be appreciated by anyone who doesn't have to cope with this curse.

On 16th of March my dear friend has ended his life as he could not stand living with PSSD as a numb shell of his former self any longer. I am shattered and so sorry that such a beautiful soul was wiped from this earth. Pascal, I love you and will never forget you. 🕯

Any or all of the above

Pharmaceutical companies are known for stating on leaflets accompanying #SSRIs that there might be a risk of suicidal ideation whilst taking the medicine. They are missing PSSD out of the equation entirely as that is the reason why such needless deaths are happening.

@Unstoppable218 And what better time than New Year. I've resolved to do all I can to face up to this PSSD curse and fight it, as long as I can; my life might be fucked but I'll be damned if I'm going to forfeit it completely over total pHARMaceutical incompetence.

The act of moving forward, no matter what, is a profound standard to live by. Despite having a compromised brain and body, taking tangible steps (no matter how small) in any direction, despite everything seeming hopeless, must be done. I don’t feel anything; I just do it.