Living With Baldness: Male Pattern Baldness: Hair Loss:
The 5 Stages
There are 40 million males in the United States of America who are experiencing some form of baldness - and I'm one of them. Here I will talk you through the five key stages of my own personal experience of what is commonly known as "going bald".
Stage 1: Discovery
I first started noticing that I was "going bald" when I was 18. It just came right out of the blue. Having a shower started to leave more than the usual trails of hair on the floor surface and combing my hair clogged up my comb with thin strands. At first I thought it was just a 'thing' that happened for no real reason and that it would sort itself out eventually, like a cold or a blister. I wasn't alarmed by this 'loss' of hair, it wasn't in large amounts so I didn't worry about it.
Not until a trip to my local barbershop that is: "You're going bald son", said the barber, peering over me with scissors in hand that for a brief moment looked like a knife. His words certainly cut deep into me. If anyone knows about baldness, it would be someone who makes a living from cutting and styling hair - bastard. 18 and going bald!
Stage 2: Denial
Faced with the prospect of going bald, I went into a stage of denial for a while. With every passing week the hair at the front of my temple was thinning out but I laughed off friends' acknowledgement of this. There was no way, at 18, I was going to accept that the hair on the top of my head, my precious hair, was falling off my head. I don't want to become a 'slap head', a 'wing nut', I thought to myself remembering all the jokes me and friends would make about bald people.
To hide my shame, my embarrassment, I started combing my hair a different way, and I even got my hair styled to deliberately hide the bald patch once or twice. It worked... I just had to avoid rain and stay at home on windy days. No problem, I don't like the rain anyway and I love staying in doors. I mean, it has always been an ambition of mine to become a water fearing hermit!
Stage 3: Insecurity
Going bald hit me quite hard. I was 18, the freedom years. No school, no work. Party time! There were to be no parties though, just plenty of blank looks in the mirror and lots of soul searching questions. Would women still find me attractive? Would I become the butt of jokes? Would people look at and see me differently? Would I be able to recover from this crushing change that was cursed upon me by 'bad' genes?
My confidence hit rock bottom, chatty, usually self confident and pretty focused on what I wanted from life, I withdrew into my shell, or as I liked to call it, my trench. For a year or so my 'condition' dominated my thoughts at most times, wherever I was, whatever company I was in, whatever I was doing. I often felt naked and vulnerable. The world seemed a bigger, more daunting place to be in.
At that age, the world should have excited me like nothing else could. I shouldn't have had any fears about life or felt so downbeat about myself and my prospects. I was a handsome guy (still am I might add... laydees!), healthy, intelligent and I had lots of friends. My social life was still very good. But those days were often a blur, the outside world seemed to speed by while I was stuck on the spot watching it all go by - me, myself and my bastard baldness.
This is when I decided to tackle my 'problem' in the only way I could. I did what I feared the most, I shaved off all my hair and become bald. I did this to get a real good look at the extent of my baldness and to stare it in the face, to challenge it head on. Hey that's not bad I thought, my baldness wasn't as bad as I imagined, it was slight at the front and having my hair cropped very very short, gave my face an extra edge if you like. The lack of hair accentuated my facial features. I was being complimented on my looks by the opposite sex and when I looked in the mirror I was happy with my 'look'.
That decision really helped me out. There was no way I could hide my baldness now and I liked my 'new look' so much, I shaved my head every 2-3 weeks and still do to this very day. Pretty soon I forgot what I looked like with hair and no longer did baldness dominate my thoughts... not for a good year or so anyway.
Stage 4: Treatment:
One of the joys of having hair is changing the look, feel and style of it on whim - that is what I missed most and still do. Shaving my head every 2-3 weeks for a year or so soon become very tiring and a chore. Seeing friends and family with different hairstyles one week to the next really made me long for some hair. It wasn't baldness I was at war with but images in magazines, on TV and in the streets of men with rich and full heads of hair, styled in every way imaginable. I missed having a fringe, I missed being able to feel my hair, I missed doing what the heck I liked with my hair.
That's when treatment of my 'condition' really first entered my mind. An advert on the back of a magazine cover advertising Minoxidil interested me so I used the Internet to find out a little more. I can buy it over the counter at a Chemists can I? Great I thought. I went out and bought a few bottles of it. Pouring over the instructions intently I applied the Minoxidil to my hair every day, once at night, once in the morning for a month or two.
Did it work? Well my hair never grew any longer over natural growth, no, but it stopped the hair loss and re-ignited the flickers of what I call fluff where the baldness had started to eat at my hair. But it was an expensive and slow process and in no way practical so I stopped buying it and turned my focus towards other forms of treatment.
I ruled out anything that involved surgery as well as "we can cure your baldness" scams. Having looked at what felt like every option available, I discovered a drug called Finasteride, a prescription drug. Again I tried it but gave up after a few weeks. Taking drugs, spraying my head with this foul smelling liquid... am I crazy? There was nothing wrong physically with me. I wasn't ill or anything like that, my baldness was natural and there wasn't a thing I could do to prevent it, arrest it or change the fact. Not without using myself as a guinea pig for the rest of my life or spending vast sums of money anyway. And I wasn't prepared to go to those lengths just to be able to brush my hair in the morning or to visit the barbershop once a month.
Stage 5: Acceptance
I am 26 now and I have accepted my baldness. While I would rather not be bald or going bald (I'm not fully bald), I now no longer long for hair or even think about it. I'm happy with who I am and with how I look. I now realise every single living person on this planet has a bald issue. Whether that be an issue with weight, acne, bad breath, saggy breasts, height issues, looks or whatever, we all have our own little problems, quirks and worries. This is why YOU have found this website and I hope you share your experiences with us and can find comfort from my own. Join the club my friend, you are not alone or different in any way, shape or form.
John Anderson