"after hormone levels return to baseline, there's no more pharmaceutical effect" Maybe no longer directly, but with one level of indirection there certainly _could_ be.
"no plausible mechanism of action" - I haven't looked into it to understand the mechanism of action for side effects from finasteride, but certainly if it can cause side effects during use, those could impact the body in a way that causes effects that persist past when usage stops.
Same with almost anything harmful that we do to our body - ideally the damage or effect is healed and we return to baseline, but very often we don't.
There could also be an effect where someone tried it, it didn't work as well as they wanted or it caused a side effect, and this was psychologically difficult to deal with and helped lead to depression and anxiety without that being directly chemically caused by the drug. And it would be fair to argue that that's not the drug's fault.
"after hormone levels return to baseline, there's no more pharmaceutical effect" Maybe no longer directly, but with one level of indirection there certainly _could_ be.
"no plausible mechanism of action" - I haven't looked into it to understand the mechanism of action for side effects from finasteride, but certainly if it can cause side effects during use, those could impact the body in a way that causes effects that persist past when usage stops.
Same with almost anything harmful that we do to our body - ideally the damage or effect is healed and we return to baseline, but very often we don't.
There could also be an effect where someone tried it, it didn't work as well as they wanted or it caused a side effect, and this was psychologically difficult to deal with and helped lead to depression and anxiety without that being directly chemically caused by the drug. And it would be fair to argue that that's not the drug's fault.