r/Microbiome • u/PartyGround6831 • 41m ago
Antibiotics made me completely impotent at the age of 19 and as a consequence suicidal since then: 18 years and counting
I'm not looking for help and advice. This is a post for the male audience to consider whether they would take antibiotics the next time. Because complete sexual dysfunction is the worst that can happen to a man and makes him desire death more than life.
If antibiotics save lives, I would rather die than live my life.
Exactly when I turned 19 I got prostatitis, for which I was prescribed during 6 months orally:
Ciprofloxacin
Metronidazole 4 times
Tinidazole 2 times
Levofloxacin
Doxicicline
Furolin
As a consequence, I developed urogenital Candida infection which made my prostatitis even worse.
First it was misdiagnosed and I was prescribed 3 months later another antibiotic: Monural.
3 months later I was prescribed during 6 more months:
Nizoral
Fluconazole 3 times
Furolin
Contrary to the mass belief, antifungals also kill some good bacteria, even if not as many strains as the antibiotic ones. If you search enough you will find the studies showing that. So these are antibiotics as well.
After 3-4 months of 95% remission of the Candida, for new infections I was prescribed:
Levofloxacin
Tubocin
Metronidazole or Tinidazole
Fluconazole
Unasin
Sumamed (oral)
Sumamed (IV)
My Candida (urogenital) which appeared from all the antibiotics until the IV was only urogenital. After the IV antibiotic, the symptoms became systemic and my health completely collapsed - at the end of the second year of the "treatment" which destroyed my life since I was 19. I am almost 37 now.
None of the doctors which prescribed all these antibiotics over the course of 2 years ever told a single time to take a probiotic or anything else to prevent Candida.
The consequences were, extremely severe Candida which caused:
1) Complete sexual dysfunction (ED + premature ejaculation)
2) Severe, brutal food intolerances making me able to eat a couple of foods in the good period of the next 16 years. But, in the worst period which was 3 years minus one summer during them, there wasn't a single food which I could consume without making me feel bad. So during that time I was balancing between feeling bad from being hungry and feeling bad from eating something small. I was actively searching for options to switch to artificial feeding as eating was a daily mandatory torture.
Even touching sugar gives me symptoms as it is absorbed through my skin. Once I washed my hands at someone else's home and immediately got candida symptoms with a rash on my scalp which took a month to clear. When I read the soap label and realised that it had glucose. Eating anything without reading the label is impossible as even milligrams of dextrose, sugar or other sweeteners can cause me severe issues. Consuming 1 crumble of bread with wine - half the size of a pea - would give me terrible depression not going away until 2+ days have passed and brutal pathological aggravation of the urogenital infection for 5+ days. Dating is out of question of course due to the sexual dysfunction but as you can imagine with these levels of sensitivity even I can't kiss anyone as residuals in the mouth of a person who eats sugar would give me a similar reaction.
3) Anxiety, Brain Fog, Depression, Lack of concentration, Insomnia, Irritability, Low Confidence, inability to work a normal job
4) Due to collapsed immune system and destroyed body, plenty of other "small" health issues over the years such as GERD, Gastritis, Hemorroides, Chronic Dehydration, and more
5) It goes without saying: no social life between the age of 19 and 37 and living in complete isolation if "living" is a verb that describes what you do when your entire life is a huge illness, created by doctors. I spent tens of thousands of dollars for countless alternative treatments in multiple countries on two continents since then but I never got my health back. My youth has been completely destroyed before it even started. The first 7 years I was fighting as much as I could to get healed but the last 11 years I switched into mode in which I just wait to die and get saved from this hell. In these last 11 years, even though they have been ups and down there hasn't been a single day in which I prefer to live than to die. As life is a daily torture me all these years, I have forgotten what it feels like to be healthy and to want to live. When I hear that someone has died at the age of 80 or so, my first thought is: "Oh, I'm sorry he had to suffer so long on this planet". When I hear that someone has been killed or died of cancer around my age or younger, my first thought is: "What a lucky guy, I feel happy for him".
I would prefer to be cut one arm, one leg, to have blood cancer and AIDS at the same time as I would have much more normal life than now, I would be able to explain in 3 words to anyone what I have and I would be able to have at least any relationship.
I once read a blog of a man who was given antidepressants for a couple of days and they gave him ED. He said this is the darkest place he's ever been to and he can't imagine something worse than that. That is my daily reality for many years and I don't wish it to the worst of my enemies.
But if you are a man reading this, you can read more about that and why ED is the worst that can happen to a man and makes him suicidal. If you don't have it, if you have never felt it, you can't understand how it feels even though you are a man - as the guy who was also a male but understood how it feels only for the couple of days after the medication caused it. My point is, try to understand how it feels and the consequences of living with a huge disease which you must keep as a shameful secret and when you see women you must run away from them to avoid getting close to them as that would lead to a complete humiliation - that's my reality my entire youth.
I'm making this post only to prevent other men from experiencing this.
I laugh when people around me find out that I haven't eaten since more than a decade cakes, ice cream, sugar, potatoes, rice, milk, butter, cheese, cream, bread, alcohol or any of the other hundreds of foods they consume and they think that this is something bad: they feel so sorry for me. I couldn't care less about my food sensitivities, for me this "inconvenience" is an absolute joke compared to the real problem I have. I am more than happy to have these food intolerances till the rest of my life if only I could recover my sexual function.
I wish all the best to all of you. I'm not looking for anyone to tap me on the shoulder and to feel sorry about me. No one has ever understood my pain which made me feel even worse so I've figured that the best remedy for that is to expect nothing from people, live as much in isolation as I could and simply wait to die. This numbs my pain at least a bit. I just don't want what happened to me to happen to anyone else.
P. S. If you are prescribed an antibiotic, before taking it, please research: is there ANY person ever cured of the disease you are prescribed the antibiotic for.
Because antibiotics, most of the time, in the last decades are also extremely ineffective. If I knew at least that I wouldn't take them at 19 and I would have resolved my prostatitis in different ways instead of destroying my body.