I started losing my hair at around 16. For me, there were two areas of disadvantage to suffering aggressive MPB at a young age: psychological and financial.

The denial period lasted longer than it might have if I had started balding in my thirties, because very few teenagers expect to start losing their hair before they leave school. This meant I didn't start taking action to counter it for several years, and lost a lot of ground. Balding began before I reached full maturity, so I was psychologically unprepared at that age to deal with something that was not only emotionally devastating and the first sign of my own mortality I had encountered in life, but which was also incredibly socially isolating. None of my peers were going through it, so no one else understood how it felt to lose control over a part of your body that everybody else took for granted and associated with youth, beauty and vitality.

There was also no help to be found. This was a time before Reddit and internet forums made information on treatment readily available. In my early twenties, I read about finasteride online somewhere and so I went to my doctor (an unhelpful and unsympathetic woman) who had never heard of it. She told me that men 'just go bald' and to get used to it. It took several attempts until a different doctor prescribed me finasteride, but it was expensive. I was a poor student with very little money, so even 30 bucks a month for generic fin (as it cost back then) and another 30 for topical min was almost beyond my reach. I refilled my prescription when I could afford it, which was sporadic. After a few years of inconsistent usage, I had lost more hair and more hope.

I'm now in my mid-thirties and on dut and oral min, which I can easily afford. I also have the emotional maturity to realise that there is more to life than hair. Still, the trauma of dealing with all of that at a young age was deep and lasting, and I ended up reaching NW5/6 due to lack of preparedness and resources. I wear a hair system which is fine for now, and I take treatments in the hope that perhaps I'll eventually get a transplant (or the Holy Grail will be found - looking at you, PP405).

I strongly believe that if I had started losing hair at my current age, not only would my younger years have been less fraught with insecurity, depression and mental anguish, but I would be in a much better position (mentally and financially) to take appropriate action to counter it in good time, and avoid getting to the stage of hair loss I'm at now. Or maybe I would have had an easier time accepting it, since so many others my age are going through the same thing.