At Wit's End
I’m a 33-year-old male, and the last four years of my life have completely destroyed my mental health, my confidence, my relationships, and honestly my sense of being human.
At 28 years old, at the beginning of 2022, I found out I had erectile dysfunction caused by venous leak (at the time I didn’t even know what “venous leak” was). That was the moment my life started falling apart mentally.
Before that, I was already dealing with anxiety, overtraining, poor sleep, stomach issues, and chronic stress, but nothing compared to what happened once I realized I could no longer function sexually like a normal man. At 28, when most people are dating, building relationships, starting families, and enjoying life, I was suddenly dealing with impotence.
I don’t think people understand what this does to a man psychologically, especially at that age. It’s not “just sex.” It affects your identity, confidence, relationships, intimacy, masculinity, and your entire perception of the future. I started isolating myself socially. Dating became terrifying. I stopped feeling normal around people. Every interaction with women became overshadowed by fear, shame, and anxiety.
I still tried to have relationships between 2022 and now. I didn’t completely give up on intimacy or connection. But every relationship eventually ended the same way.
Things would start normally, but after a couple of months the low intimacy (or lack of), anxiety, and the slow breakdown of closeness would lead to the same outcome: breakup.
I became obsessed with trying to fix it. I tried supplements, pelvic floor exercises, all medications (Cialis, Viagra, etc.), lifestyle changes, training adjustments, stretching, and spent countless hours reading forums every night. Nothing gave me my life back.
And while all of this was already crushing me mentally, another nightmare began.
At the end of 2023, after nasal surgeries for breathing problems, I developed Empty Nose Syndrome.
That’s when my life truly became unbearable.
Most people cannot understand how horrifying it is to lose the natural feeling of breathing. My nose feels both too open and blocked at the same time. I wake up every morning exhausted with a dry mouth, brain fog, air hunger, and a constant sensation that I cannot get a satisfying breath — even through my mouth. My nervous system feels permanently stuck in survival mode.
Sleep stopped feeling restorative. I can only fall asleep on one side of my body. If I lie on my right side, it feels like my brain never fully shuts off. I wake up tired no matter how many hours I sleep. I spend entire days yawning, feeling weak, detached, anxious, unable to focus, and short of breath.
It feels like my body forgot how to breathe automatically.
Since developing ENS symptoms, my mental health has deteriorated beyond anything I thought possible. The combination of chronic exhaustion, air hunger, insomnia, sexual dysfunction, physical pain, and hopelessness has slowly changed me as a person. I feel trapped inside my own body every second of the day.
The worst part is how invisible all of this is.
I genuinely mourn the person I used to be before 2022.
I miss feeling relaxed.
I miss waking up rested.
I miss breathing naturally.
I miss sexual confidence.
I miss excitement for the future.
I miss feeling connected to people.
I miss feeling like a man.
I miss feeling alive instead of surviving.
I honestly don’t know how much more of this my mind can take.