Double22 (imported) wrote: Tue Sep 24, 2019 2:04 pm Also, and this is completely unrelated but...

Has anyone experienced changes in gender identity since their castration? I haven't experienced any gender dysphoria but a year ago I did a trial of chemical castration, and about two months later I started thinking a lot about what life would be like as a girl.

Wow, the trick is in recognizing whether or not one is experiencing some confusion of one's gender. Seriously, there are changes in our body's chemistry after castration. And these changes take some time to happen. Of course once the testes are removed there is an instant stop in that testosterone factory. Although we do indeed have some other small sources of testosterone production in our body's there is a huge hit to the hormonal balance which begins (even without realizing it) quite a few subtle changes. And that huge drop in hormonal balance has so many subtle side effects it's difficult to notice unless you are specifically looking for them.

In my case all I desired was to have neither male nor female genitals. If that is what decides gender all I wanted was to be neither male nor female. (and I still consider myself neither male nor female for that matter) Dysphoria suggests a confusion and I was never confused about my desires. I knew exactly what those desires were from childhood. It just took 30 years to accomplish those desires. Without sufficient hormone production in my body I did suffer some loss of energy and stamina as well as endurance after enough time of my body flushing or expending if you will the last of the hormones within. I needed some sort of hormone to get those back and chose estrogen. I simply didn't have enough understanding of everything that hormones do for us and didn't realize the physical changes that would take place. But over time those physical changes did begin and I didn't even notice them for a long time. Perhaps because I wasn't interested in those changes so I wasn't looking for them. Had I been looking for them I may have noticed sooner.

I never wondered or though

Double22 (imported) wrote: Tue Sep 24, 2019 2:04 pm t about what life would be like as a

female. Nor do I now. Although society has chosen to view me as a female I know I'm not. I've never been confused (dysphoria) about my sex (gender). I'm honest with myself and am what/who I am. I don't lie to myself about that nor pretend to be that which I'm not. Make no mistake, because society sees us as either male or female I let them think what they want and avoid upsetting the apple barrel. The changes I've made to my body were done for me and nobody else. I am the only one who can breath air into my lungs.

T+ 49

My level of comfort remains the same. A few days ago I could feel the proverbial noose of the active sexual energy tying itself around me while meditating. As I slowly descended into it I noticed that it felt much slower and weaker than before. I applied a dispassionate attitude of distaste and disillusionment with all desirable things: my descent slowed, and then stopped at a quarter of the way down. I used my meager and underdeveloped skills of concentration to project dispassion and calm, and the active sexual energy remained stable. There was no anxiety flush causing my emotional core to zoom in on the sexual energy to the exclusion of all else, and the energy did not manifest in my body (lips, tongue, hands). In other words, the energy was docile enough for me to remain grounded. This continued for ten minutes, with neither myself nor the sexual energy making any headway against each other, until I simply decided to get up and do something else, whereupon it 90% left my mind after 15 or so minutes.

On the 300mg of sertraline alone I felt that the frequency of the active sexual energy attacks were down by 90%, and the degree of the passive (throughout the day) sexual energy causing discomfort and apprehension was down by 50%. On the sertraline and 200mg of CPA, it feels like a 99% and 90% improvement, respectively. My peace-of-mind is such that last weekend I picked up the cheap guitar I bought two years ago and actually started learning to play it, and I've resumed doing my research on hypnosis and memory reconsolidation, instead of just surfing the web and listening to music trying to distract myself.

I've reduced by CPA intake to 150mg as of T+45 and soon it will be down to 100mg, in anticipation of my adding raloxifene to the regimen. Given my current feelings of safety, I will have to do research on raloxifene's risks of thromboembolitic events in males, because that's a legitimate concern and I'm no longer in a do-or-die situation.

I get the occasional night-time sweats which wake me up. It's strange, the air inside my blankets feels hot, but I feel cold at the same time. Sleeping fully clothed appears to help this out. On the whole, they're pretty mild and tolerable. Alongside the interrupted sleep I'm also waking up an hour earlier in the morning than I usually do, which is actually pretty convenient as far as my work schedule goes.

I haven't noticed any depression (confounded by me taking my preposterous 300mg of sertraline/day), reduced cognitive abilities, fatigue or indeed any changes in my body or mind. My testicles remain the same size, and my body odor remains the same. I guess I inherited my bodily response to no sex hormones from my mother as her experience with menopause has been similar (the fatigue and cognition part obviously, not the testicles and body odor). We have fun bitching to each other about night sweats and interrupted sleep actually.

T + 57

Whew, almost two months in the between-state. At T+50 I experienced an increase in uncomfortable passive sexual energy. I attributed this to either me lowering my dose of Androcur to 150mg or taking 60mg of Raloxifene per day for 2 days. I went back up to 200mg of Androcur and ceased the raloxifene until I can get a better idea of whether it's a useful adjunct to chemical castration. I can't find any reports on the forum of people who actually got further decreases in libido by adding raloxifene the way I found for tamoxifen. I'm going to be stuck in the same house as a small child this Thanksgiving so I'll not risk adding a CNS estrogenic agonist until after this weekend. Obviously the worst reasonable case scenario for this situation is that I'm forced to play video games in private to quell the sexual energy. Three or so days (T+53) after I went back up to 200mg of Androcur I felt better, but this was also three or so days after stopping raloxifene, which I read has an average half life of ~35 hours, with it lingering in some people with a half life of ~90 hours.

God, the field of psychiatric forensic sexology is a shambles. I can find over a dozen studies on the use of SERM's in schizophrenia of all things, and not one that investigates their use as an adjunct to chemical castration. The best study on the use of chemical castration using a GnRH agonist is over 20 years old! A forensic psychologist once told me that he didn't think chemical castration really reduces sexual feelings/thoughts in pedophiles. I later asked him how he knew this, and he told me that he based this on a single client of his. One client!

Seven yikes.

Seven.

Anyway, thank you all for reading and supporting me.