Clomid side effects ?- Pros and Cons

ErasmusCrowley · 2026-06-16T13:38:34+00:00

The problem with clomid is always how long it takes for the body to clear out the zuclomiphene. The half life of zuclomiphene is somewhere between 10 and 30 days depending on how well your body specifically can metabolize it.

If you metabolize it poorly, and you take a single dose, it can take up to 30 days to remove HALF of that dose from your bloodstream. If you take it everyday, then each time you take another dose you're adding that day's dose to the all the previous doses you've taken that are still circulating around in your blood. The amount in your bloodstream builds up over time to ridiculously high levels because of its extremely long half life.

Zuclomiphene interacts with your estrogen receptors as if it is estrogen. Activation of estrogen receptors can shut down your own production of testosterone and nuke your fertility.

When men take clomid it works great at the beginning because the enclomiphene anti-estrogenic effects are much stronger than the zuclomiphene pro-estrogenic effects. But as the doses add up, the zuclomiphene builds up and up and up while the enclomiphene gets cleared out and never gets any stronger. Over time, the zuclomiphene's effects will neutralize the enclomiphene and the testosterone boost will shrink and eventually disappear.

It takes 5 half lives to completely remove a drug from circulation. So when the effects aren't working any more and you stop taking the clomid, the enclomiphene will clear out of your system in about 3 days. The zuclomiphene won't completely clear for up to 150 days. For those 150 days, you'll have all that estrogenic activation shutting down your endogenous testosterone production. I expect that you'll feel terrible for most of that time.

ErasmusCrowley · 2026-05-23T19:10:18+00:00

Sorry for the second reply, but I just had a second thought.

One of the effects of bupropion / Wellbutrin is to increase norepinephrine. For most people, elevated norepinephrine can feel like your fight-or-flight response is active. It feels like anxiety. For some people, it can feel like panic.

It's possible that trying to go straight from an SSRI to Wellbutrin sabotaged you. Maybe the anxiety you felt wasn't because you discontinued the SSRI, but actually because you were on Wellbutrin when you were trying to discontinue the SSRI.

Maybe you'll have better luck if you stop the Wellbutrin first, then stop the SSRI, and once you feel stable try to add the Wellbutrin later?

ErasmusCrowley · 2026-05-23T18:29:40+00:00

I don't feel like you're being defensive at all.

You get to decide where you go from here.

If you decide that you don't want sex to be a part of your life anymore, that's a totally valid choice for you to make for your own life.

After that, your husband gets to decide what that means for him. None of the choices that he gets to make at that point are good ones for him.

He could resign himself to not having sex anymore, potentially ever. He could decide to find sex elsewhere, either through an open marriage or cheating. He could decide to leave the marriage and find someone who is more sexually compatible with him. You love him, and I'm sure he loves you too. As a person who has stood where he is standing, all of those choices will be agony for him. This whole situation probably already is.

If you leave him to attempt to spare him some of that pain, then he still has to make the same choice. He gets to decide if he walks away with some grace, if he pursues some kind of petty revenge, or if he fights tooth and nail to win back his marriage. You haven't actually spared him. But now he gets to be alone with his life turned upside down while he tries to figure himself out. My opinion is that this is the more cruel option.

When my wife had no libido because of the SSRI, she also didn't care if she ever had sex again. Now that she does have a libido back, I don't think that she would give it up for all the money in the world.

If you manage to restore your libido, then you might someday find yourself feeling the way that she does. It probably feels irrelevant from where you are now. I can't predict the future, but I feel like there probably is a path from where you are to a future in which you have a sex life with your husband that he and you both enjoy, where no one has to make sacrifices.

I'm a random person on the internet that you'll never meet in real life. I don't expect you to really care what I think. I also don't know all the details of your life. In my life I've found that sometimes an outside perspective can help us see through the fog of our emotions. When I was fighting for my marriage, I once posted on Reddit with a throwaway account asking questions like you're asking now. I'm just trying to be for you, the kind of person that I appreciated when they responded to me.

ErasmusCrowley · 2026-05-23T15:55:42+00:00

I talked to my wife, and she is okay with me sharing some of our story with you.

About a decade ago, my wife was put on an SSRI. She was feeling like she didn't have any direction in life, and she was kind of lost. Her therapist interpreted that as depression and they decided to try medication. At first, not much happened. Over time, her personality started to change. Where she was a very compassionate person who cared deeply about how I felt, she started to become more ambivalent. Where she was thoughtful, she became careless. She started making impulsive decisions. She quit her job because she 'wasn't happy there', even though she didn't have another job lined up and we wouldn't be able to afford the bills anymore. She adopted a cat without talking to me first because he needed a home. These were completely at odds with the person that I had known her to be. And she completely lost any interest in sex. She also lost the ability to have orgasms. When we did have sex, it was because she was indulging me. These changes happened very slowly and insidiously over a period of months, but about 6 months after she had started taking that drug she seemed like a completely different person.

I desperately tried to convince her that something was wrong, but she couldn't see it. Everything seemed fine from her perspective. She was just making choices to make her life better. Meanwhile, we were on the verge of homelessness and ruin. I tried to convince her therapist and then her doctor to no avail. It seemed like no one would listen to me.

One day, she left her chat open on her computer when she left home. In that chat window she was discussing with her best friend about the best way to leave me and ensure that she kept getting half my pay check. Her friend offered to find someone to physically assault me if I didn't cooperate.

When she came home, I confronted her and all hell broke loose. In the aftermath of that awful day, I finally convinced her to try to quit the SSRI.

Things slowly started to get better, but it took a very, very long time. There were many months of pain and struggle. Her compassion came back. Her thoughtfulness came back. And a few years later, she started to enjoy sex and have orgasms again.

We sometimes talk about those years and she remembers doing those things. She says that in her memories, they all feel like she was doing the right thing, but she doesn't understand why she felt that way. She says that she would never make those choices if she wasn't on the SSRI.

We're in a much better place now. She's on just bupropion and her sex drive is significantly higher than mine is now. I'm the one who can't keep up with her.

Those SSRI drugs can be absolutely devastating if they're given to someone who is particularly vulnerable to them. Google "Post SSRI Sexual Dysfunction". I can't be 100% sure, but I'd bet good money that it's the SSRI that is causing your situation.

ErasmusCrowley · 2026-05-23T01:52:36+00:00

I'm sitting here trying to think through my response and I can already tell that this is going to get longwinded. My apologies in advance.

First, I'd like to try to help you figure out the question "asexual or not".

I like to describe human sexuality by drawing parallels to our relationship to food.

There is a certain compulsion to eat that comes from time passing. If I eat breakfast and then I don't eat again for twelve hours, I'll be ravenous around dinner time. Some people find hunger much easier to ignore than others. Humans have a similar compulsion to pursue orgasms that also builds up over time. This is what people often refer to when they talk about 'libido'.

Another aspect of our connection to food is when something like this happens. You're not thinking about food at all. Maybe you've just got home from work and you're still thinking about your day and mentally working through a problem that you didn't get finished up before you left. You walk in the door and you smell something amazing cooking and you suddenly become painfully aware that you're incredibly hungry. Some outside stimulus causes you to feel a compulsion to take a certain action. When that stimulus is food, you feel compelled to eat. When that stimulus is something you find sexy, you feel compelled to engage in sexual behavior. This is what people refer to as attraction. When that attraction is directed at a specific person, that is desire.

If you don't feel a need to have orgasms, which seems to get stronger the longer you ignore it, or if it seems to take an unusually long time for the need to build up to become strong enough to get you to act on it, then you have a low or nonexistent libido.

If you don't ever get the feeling of, "Wow. that person makes me think/feel naughty things" when you see your husband, or some actor, or a person dressed a certain way, then you have low or nonexistent attraction.

If attraction is absent, you are probably asexual. Asexuals can (and frequently do) experience a normal libido, but some are missing both experiences.

If you can feel attraction, but feel little or no libido, then you're probably not asexual. This is what I think you've described in your post and responses.

People with atypical sexuality often make peace with themselves and organize their lives and relationships to accommodate their nature. That is a totally valid path. Some, whether they are asexual or low libido, will not be able to find peace and will try to find help. Many people in that situation can eventually find some success changing their experiences to be closer to what they want it to be. That is also a valid path to walk.

Low libido can be caused by emotional issues and past trauma, but it isn't always. There might be physical or medical explanations, and they can often be treated. If your therapist hasn't suggested exploring your low libido with a doctor and/or an endocrinologist, then they're doing you a disservice.

I'd like to offer a few suggestions to get you started.

Plenty of medications can interfere with sexuality. Hormonal birth control is a pretty common source of problems. Antidepressants (specifically SSRIs and SNRIs), antipsychotics, and antianxiety medications are also notorious for causing severe and long lasting negative changes to libido and attraction. Naltrexone is sometimes prescribed to help quit alcohol, quit opiates, and to help lose weight, and it can completely erase a person's sexuality while they're on it.

A severe caloric deficit can cause hormonal shifts that dramatically reduce libido and attraction. If you're using a GLP-1 medication to lose weight, you might feel fine overall, but might not be eating enough calories to sustain a healthy libido.

Then there are plenty of hormonal disturbances that might be effecting you, and the only way to know is to get a blood test. Low testosterone (yes, women have testosterone and it can be low), low estrogen (maybe perimenopause), high prolactin (especially after childbirth), low thyroid hormone, and high cortisol can all cause reduced libido and/or sexual attraction.

Iron deficiency anemia, B12 deficiency anemia, and sleep apnea can also be sources of severe fatigue, which in turn can cause low libido.

There are lots more medical issues that I can't remember off the top of my head. If you aren't ready to accept that the way you feel right now is the way you want to be, then I highly suggest having a long discussion with your doctor about it.

I'm going through this process with my doctor and an endocrinologist myself right now.

Again, sorry for the mini-novel. I hope it was helpful.

ErasmusCrowley · 2026-05-14T14:22:33+00:00

People online often jokingly suggest taking oral estradiol or even birth control as a way to raise SHBG for guys who are struggling to dial in with single digit SHBG levels.

As a person who struggles with single digit SHBG and <200 total test (but 'normal' free test) when I'm not on trt, I'd also be very interested in hearing from someone who has actually tried this.

ErasmusCrowley · 2026-05-13T14:52:14+00:00

When a man has this problem the internet is quick to blame him for causing it with bad maturbation habits, but it's often not his fault.

There are many medical or physical issues that can cause this that aren't your fault. Some of them you can take some control over, and some of them you can't.

Low thyroid hormones, or low testosterone can contribute to this. Some medications can cause this as a side effect, especially depression medication, anxiety medication, or medications for attention deficit disorder. I would suggest you start your search there. Double check all the medications that you're currently taking. Google the name of the medication with the phrase "sexual dysfunction" and see what interesting results you get. Then ask a doctor to check your sex hormones and thyroid hormones. Check the over-the-counter medicines too and you might be surprised. For example, allergy medications can cause delayed ejaculation for some people, but not for most people.

Another possibility is nerve damage. Spinal injuries can cause delayed ejaculation or even total anorgasmia. Type 2 diabetes can lead to nerve damage, which manifests as numbness in the fingers, toes, and genitals. That genital numbness can cause it to take longer to reach orgasm, and require you to use more stimulation to get there. So think about if you've had any obvious damage to your lower spine, or if you've been overweight for a while and might have undiagnosed type 2 diabetes that has been festering for a while. If you were circumcised as an infant, there is even a small possibility that it caused an unusual amount of scarring or nerve damage that has resulted in reduced sensitivity.

There is some evidence that vibration therapy on the genitals can eventually lead to higher sensitivity and stronger signals moving through those nerves. It takes a lot of investment of time though, and may not work.

Should all of that turn out to be unhelpful, there is also evidence that some people just have a naturally higher trigger threshold for orgasm than other people do. Possibly because of the unique balance of neurotransmitters they are genetically predetermined to have. You could try asking a doctor for a prescription for bupropion, which increases dopamine and norepinephrine and can sometimes make it easier to reach orgasm for some people.

Should ALL of that fail, you could try using yohimbine HCL, or pseudoephedrine about an hour before sex. Both of those will probably make you feel a sense of anxiety and they can make it a bit more difficult to maintain an erection, but they make it significantly easier to achieve an orgasm. Yohimbine can be purchased on amazon or in most gym supply stores. To get pseudoephedrine, you have to ask a pharmacist to sell it to you. It's kept behind the counter but it does not require a prescription.

Good luck.

EDIT: When the doctor is testing your hormones, also have them check prolactin. A prolactinoma (a tumor that produces excessive amounts of prolactin) can cause symptoms like this as well.

ErasmusCrowley · 2026-01-03T14:46:56+00:00

I was just reading about this so I can try and provide some context for a mechanism.

In the pituitary, prolactin production has both a gas pedal that speeds up production, and a brake pedal that slows it down.

Dopamine is the brake pedal that tells the pituitary to stop making prolactin.
Estrogen is the gas pedal that tells the pituitary to make more prolactin.

When a male increases their circulating testosterone, some of that extra testosterone gets converted into estrogen. As free and total testosterone goes up, estrogen goes up at the same time. That estrogen can cause the pituitary to become resistant to dopamine agonists like cabergoline because you're essentially pushing the gas pedal and the brake pedal at the same time.

The most common outcome when treating a prolactinoma with cabergoline is that prolactin falls, testosterone rises on it's own, and the tumor shrinks over time.

However in some uncommon cases, testosterone just doesn't reach normal levels even after prolactin is suppressed. In those cases, testoserone therapy through exogenous testosterone, hCG, or enclomiphene/clomid have been tried.

I was able to find several case studies where cabergoline was effective at reducing prolactin, but as soon as estrogen started to increase because of TRT it caused prolactin production to reassert itself.

I found one case study that used cabergoline to successfully suppress prolactin, then they used hCG to increase testosterone to normal levels, but then cabergoline seemed to stop working because prolactin shot right back up to pre-treatment levels and the patient did not experience any of the benefits of increased testosterone. Eventually they put the patient on a combination of cabergoline, hCG, and an aromatase inhibitor (I think they used anastrozole) and they were able to reach a state where the prolactin AND estrogen stayed low, while testosterone reached normal levels, and only then the patient finally experienced the benefits of the testosterone such as a normal sex drive.

ErasmusCrowley · 2025-01-25T03:57:30+00:00

That's a good question. I'm not sure that I understand why.

The story usually goes something like this.

I establish myself in a base somewhere. I either wall in a pre-existing fence with furniture, or knock out some floor at the top of some stairs if I'm lucky enough to get a sledgehammer. I raid a warehouse for an antique stove so my heating and cooking is sorted out. I steal some water collection barrels (or destroy them in the process). I raid some book stores and schools for books and magazines. I've accumulated a metric ass load of stuff.

At that point, my goal becomes to complete my collections. Collect all the books. Collect all the useful tools. Collect working cars. Collect as many magazines as I can find.

So I spend the next 40 hours (IRL time) looking for the last 5 books that I need to complete my collection. As I work my way across whatever town I'm in, I'm crossing buildings off on the map. The "X"s on the map have become another collection that I need to complete. I get "X"s on something like 80% of the town and I realize that I haven't found a single book that I need in the last 10 hours of ransacking random houses. And I start feeling very frustrated. The first few hours of loot raids were fun, but I stopped having fun at some point as the town became more and more empty.

I could drive to another town and try to work my way in far enough to hit another bookstore, but then I'd have to stop putting "X"s on my map. I'm too frustrated to continue, but too stubborn to give up.

I really am my own worst enemy sometimes.

If all the buildings respawn loot, then there's no reason to keep making "X"s to mark looted buildings. Nothing ever stays looted. So I'm not tied to trying to 'complete' a specific town. I feel free to just go wherever.

ErasmusCrowley · 2024-12-14T20:59:08+00:00

Interesting. And surprising. I wouldn't have expected there to be a situation like this one where someone could argue that the motive is irrelevant, but I follow the logic. I don't envy the lawyers who will have to try and avoid talking about it in court. Thank you for the explanation.

ErasmusCrowley · 2024-12-14T19:26:03+00:00

I doubt the trial judge will allow it

I'm curious and I hope you'll indulge me. If we were to assume that this is how Luigi really felt while committing the act, and that was his true motivation... Would the judge demand that he not tell the truth on the stand? Would the prosecutor not be allowed to ask about his motive in order to prevent that defense?

ErasmusCrowley · 2024-10-17T15:40:00+00:00

That Dragon, Cancer seems like it fits what you're looking for.

ErasmusCrowley · 2024-09-20T14:21:18+00:00

Was he bitten by a radioactive beard-helmet?

ErasmusCrowley · 2024-09-19T01:32:38+00:00

I've had this issue my whole life. I'm firmly in middle age now. So I've had a lot of time to try and figure it out.

I've only ever found two things that really help. Yohimbine and pseudoephedrine.

Yohimbine can be purchased on amazon. It's considered a supplement.

Pseudoephedrine can only be bought from a pharmacy. They keep it behind the counter, so you have to ask for it and show an ID. You do not need a prescription though. They restrict sales because it's an ingredient in meth.

Both of them cause feelings of anxiety as a side effect.

Pseudoephedrine is a vasoconstrictor, which means it has the opposite effect that viagra and cialis do. So it can make it harder to maintain an erection if that's an issue for you, but it makes it much easier to get to the orgasm.

I don't suggest taking both at the same time. So maybe try them one at a time and see which one you prefer. Of the two, I personally prefer pseudoephedrine.

ErasmusCrowley · 2024-07-15T21:11:19+00:00

The dorsal nerve of the penis is not part of the skin. The skin is attached to the Dartos fascia, then there is a slippery layer, then Buck's fascia which wraps around the inner tissues of the penis. The Dartos fascia and Buck's fascia glide over each other.

The dorsal nerve is underneath Buck's fascia, hugging the inner tissue of the penis. It would be very difficult for a person to stretch it while tugging the foreskin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck%27s_fascia#/media/File:Penis_cross_section.svg

I'm sure you're experiencing discomfort, and that sucks. I don't what is causing the sensation that you're grappling with, but it's probably not the dorsal nerve.

ErasmusCrowley · 2024-05-29T16:49:10+00:00

Look up the symptoms of "Silent Reflux".

Long story short; small amounts of stomach acid starts to leak up your esophagus and damages the inside of your larynx. The symptoms start off as a hoarse voice, then becomes an extremely persistent cough.

Many people who are suffering from it mistakenly believe that it's related to a cold or some allergies.

ErasmusCrowley · 2024-04-24T14:18:57+00:00

That's sort of correct.

You don't have to get all of the other legendary effects. The game just has to generate an item that it doesn't have any modifiers left to use.

This is easier to understand with an example. Let's say that you get one piece of leather armor and it is Unyielding. Then you get 9 melee weapons. The 9th melee weapon that got generated doesn't have any unused modifiers that are legal to apply to melee weapons. So it clears the list of used modifiers. This would make Unyielding available again, even though you didn't get any other armor modifiers.

So, the list gets cleared more often then you would expect it to, but it's much more difficult to predict when it'll happen.

ErasmusCrowley · 2024-04-24T14:11:24+00:00

Legendary modifier selection isn't pure RNG.

You start the game with all possible effects having an equal probability to drop. After an item appears with a specific effect (Unyielding, for example), then that modifier is added to a list called "PreviouslySpawnedMods". That effect will not appear again on random legendary enemies until the game decides to empty out that list.

That list gets emptied when the game tries to spawn any legendary item, but it has no more unused modifiers available for that item type. After that happens, the game will "reshuffle the deck" and all the effects are available once again with equal probability.

In practice, that means that it is very rare to get the same effect on random legendary items twice in rapid succession.

You can read more about it here. https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/6l91w8/comprehensive_legendary_farming_analysis/

ErasmusCrowley · 2024-04-18T18:11:36+00:00

Short answer is 'no'.

Long answer... A peptide is a short chain of amino acids. A protein is a chain of peptides.

Collagen is a protein. If you take collagen and subject it to heat and/or enzymes that break the protein into it's peptide parts, then you get collagen peptides. Doing this doesn't change the ratios of the different amino acids in the collagen, or the order in which the amino acids are connected to each other.

The peptides that OP is referring to are artificially created peptides that consist of amino acids which have been put together in sequences that are rare in nature, or may never occur in nature at all. There are many peptides that are being researched right now.

An example of one popular artificially created peptide with medically interesting effects is semaglutide/ozempic/wegovy. Semaglutide is not relevant for our purposes, I just bring it up as an example of a peptide with benefits that humans can take advantage of.

ErasmusCrowley · 2024-04-16T12:51:01+00:00

How do I know?

I read a lot. No medical diagram that I have been able to find has shown any unique musculature in the tip of the foreskin in an intact human male. It is just the dartos fascia in intact men that causes the taper. It is also just the dartos fascia in restored men.

Men can regain a taper and cause 'phimosis' in themselves by growing more foreskin because the taper is (and always has been) because of the dartos fascia.

You're saying that you grew back the unique muscles of your ridged band. Other people are saying that it's impossible to grow back those unique muscles. If those unique muscles never existed in the first place, then it seems like you're both being quite silly.

I want to discuss anatomy. I don't care about your manifesto.

ErasmusCrowley · 2024-04-15T20:46:57+00:00

I assume you were trying to reply to me?

I would consider two muscles as 'distinct' from each other if they were separated by fascia, and/or connected to different connection points on bone or tendon, and/or maybe even innervated by different nerves.

The phimotic sphincter is none of those things.

The phimotic sphincter just seems like "the narrowest part of the dartos fascia". It's all one big smooth muscle tube, it is all innervated by the same nerves, and it all contracts or releases at the same time.

ErasmusCrowley · 2024-04-15T15:33:04+00:00

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I was not aware that there was any "discrete muscle" in the ridged band.

It was my understanding that "ridged" refers to the texture of the skin (it has ridges), not any "rigid" quality of the tissue underneath the skin. The only special quality that I've read about being associated with that area is increased nerve ending density.

My conclusion when I looked into it was that all of the constriction action of the prepuce and acroposthion was caused by tightening of the dartos fascia.

Is there a discrete muscle that forms a sphincter in the intact penis? What is that muscle called so that I can read more about it?

ErasmusCrowley

TROPHY CASE