Hi Riven,

I'm always glad to hear from you and I will respond more on your sleep questions by tomorrow. Of course, you are right and I did not respond to your earlier post in which you discussed your psychotherapy experience. I do try to respond to everything and I apologize for not doing that with you. When people take the time and care to write and share their own experiences, I definitely want to respond. I'll also further address the psychotherapy issue. Right now, I'm just too tired (not enough sleep?) to respond fully .

My best to you,

Todd

Hi Jeff_Macadams,

Thanks for your comments on your own experience. I've actually experienced some extremely intense, happy emotions as a male, they just didn't last more than 30 to 60 minutes. Now, these same emotions can go on for many hours or over a day. I think that may be starting to subside some. I definitely want to hold on to these new emotional experiences, too.

Hi Riven,

I don't think I was getting enough sleep at all until the last two nights. Before then, I just didn't want to go to bed because I was feeling so happy. Most nights I was getting no more than 5 - 6 hours of sleep, sometimes less.

I haven't had any hot flashes or any problems feeling too warm when I sleep. In fact, I've had to leave the temperature higher than I usually do at night because I've felt I can't stay warm. Last night, I had the temperature set at 72 F, had the gas fireplace going and still neede two wool blankets as I slept in the recliner downstairs. Before Androcur, I'd set the temperature at about 65 F at night. We all react differently to drugs. I feel really well rested this morning, though.

I think what's making a difference for me now is I'm taking the time to wind down before going to bed and I'm getting to bed earlier. I'm now soaking in the nice, warm tub for at least 45 minutes before going to bed. Before, I really hated leaving this site to go to bed. Now, I've made the decision that I've got to log off earlier, wind down and get to bed by 11 PM at the latest. For some time, I was often staying up until 1, 2 or even 3 AM. Not helpful for getting a good night's rest.

I agree with you that I need to keep an eye on how I'm sleeping. If I continue to feel well rested in the morning, things are probably OK. If not, though, I'll investigate this further.

It is interesting that you mention dreams. I'm having a lot more of them, that I remember anyway, now with Androcur. Before, I rarely recalled any dreams at all. Now some nights my dreams are so vivid (not in a bad way) that I've got to conciously tell myself they're not real.

BTW, although I certainly can't rule it out for the future, I've experienced no depression in the 9 weeks I've been on Androcur. I've always cried over beautiful music so I'm very used to that kind of response and I don't consider it a bad thing. My issue with the emotions hasn't been that they've been bad, but simply that they haven't let up at all. It was getting to the point where I couldn't concentrate on my work because I was so intensely happy. I didn't want to work and, in fact, I didn't. Fortunately, I could get away with that for a few days because generally I work really hard .

I'll respond to your previous posting on dealing with post traumatic stress in a minute.

-todd

Check that sleep sit uation, I did not sleep well on it, until I took Estrogen - Estrogen is like a natural sleep agent for me.....but without it I felt like I was laying in bed for 8 hrs.

The other thing to note is t hat one side effect of Cypreterone Acetate (Androcur) is that too much can lead to depression - check the strength you are taking and lighten it up if youi feel youirself getting listless, not feeling like doing things you usually do etc...

Kepe an eye on that- it'll sneak right up on you, it did for me!!

Hey Tclosetgirl,

Thanks for the info! The last two nights I've slept well, but that's not enough time to conclude that the situation has changed and all is well. I might consider some estrogen when I first visit the clinic endocrinologist in February. I'm having a little problem adjusting to the idea of taking it since, so far anyway, I haven't really felt that I'm male to female. I'm certainly androgynous, though!

So far, I haven't had any depression on Androcur, 100 mg/day. There have been one or two times when I felt there was a hint I might be starting to get some depression. I skipped one dose then and everything seemed to be fine. OTOH, I do sometimes feel really low on energy. What's worked for me at those times, so far, is to work out. Then my energy goes way up and I feel terrific.

I really appreciate you sharing you own experience! Thanks!

-todd

Hi Riven,

One more comment on your most recent post. Generally, I see my psychiatrist no more than once every 2 - 3 months. He basically asks how I'm feeling, I say great and then I make the next appointment. I haven't taken the mood stabilizer since Thursday morning. I seem to be doing fine without it.

Another friend who knows about these meds says they generally take days to start working. I suspect my initial reaction of feeling 'my moods had been flattened' was, therefore, more a result of being exhausted. He has warned me, though, to be very aware that hypomania is a serious condition and not to ignore symptoms. Should I really have that I need to be very careful that I do get it treated.

On to your response on post traumatic stress disorder. My assault took place in 1984. I'll just say a little more about it here than I've mentioned before. The people that assaulted me were poor folks, and a friend of theirs, that my ex-wife and I were trying to help through a program run by the city we were in at the time. As I've mentioned elsewhere, there was so much blood left all over the place from the assault that

Danya (imported) wrote: Mon Dec 31, 2007 7:03 am the police thought someone had been shot.

They also later told us that they would never go into that neighborhood without a partner AND a dog.

I could have easily been killed, I was later told by a doctor, by the types and severity of the blows I received. The therapist I was seeing at the time wanted to hospitalize me because of my really bottomed out mental state. I refused, being concerned about what that would do to my career! Really stupid of me.

I was terrified of going to bed and trying to sleep. I wished someone would tie me down, I was so afraid I'd get up, go to the kitchen and get a knife to kill myself. I was also having some aural hallucinations.

If this had been a simple assault, I don't think I would have had nearly as much trouble dealing with it. I'm not saying I would have never had PTSD, though. The fact that the people who attacked me knew us made it far worse. Even with that addition, though, I think I might have dealt with it better if it hadn't been for the additional piece that I'm not prepared to go into here, at least not for now. This last part was far worse than being physically assaulted and to me seems more like being psychologically assaulted. It went on for 6 weeks. That missing part left me feeling totally abandoned, helpless and unable to defend myself. I know this doesn't make much sense without knowing what happend. It's intensely personal, though, and I'm not prepared to discuss it. BTW, my ex-wife was always much stronger than me in these kinds of situations. She stood by me with tremendous emotional support through all of this.

Occasionally, I'd even get angry with her during this period, though. She hadn't been physically violated so she couldn't possibly understand what I was going through, or so I rather cruelly told her. The fact is, she was also undergoing the same 6-week psychological assault just as I was. So it wasn't at all easy for her, either.

The thing is, Riven, I wound up dealing with my initial experience by totally repressing everything that had happened. I did feel abandoned and helpless but there was no way I could continue living while feeling that. As I've mentioned elsewhere, 5 years after the assault I experienced PTSD for the first of 3 times. What triggered it was the murder of a young college man who was on spring break just across the Texas border in Mexico. He'd been abducted in front of friends on a busy street. The abductors were drug traffickers who thought human sacrifice would protect them from the police. They were mass murderers. Sorry, I can't discuss more details about that now, I'm in tears. The thing is, my therapist at the time told me that my reaction was really about me and my own assault. Of course, I didn't want to believe him at first. What I was doing was relating my own feelings of abandonment and being violated when I was assaulted to what I assumed were this young man's own feelings. I can't go into details now, but it turns out his family and the police have evidence that he did indeed feel abandoned. He was kept alive for twelve hours.

So, for several months I was working through my feelings on this. At first, I was so distraught for the first time in my life I passed out from drinking way to much liquor. Normally I'm not a heavy drinker at all. I was extremely angry and, very uncharacteriscally, I physically displayed this anger. Not by hurting anyone (I've never laid a finger on another person) but by slamming my fist into the wall, screaming, slamming metal rods into stone-topped lab benches at work.

For the first time, I totally lost faith in any kind of Creator. Earlier, I'd wondered if there really was a God and things like that. That was mostly a mental exercise. Now, I was totally convinced on an emotional level that there was none. This was really devastating. I was feeling just as abandoned as when I was assaulted, maybe even more so.

I wound up doing something my therapist did not recommend at all. He later was impressed, though, because the end result was very good and it led to my recovery. I contacted the young man's family and helped them some financially with work they were doing to set up a foundation to help find runaway kids (although their son hadn't been a runaway). I became and outspoken supporter of their petition for the government to do more about the drug trafficking problem in the US. I spoke at churches and to Tough Love groups and similar organizations about the petition so I could get signatures. These types of activities and everything else I did at this time were very new experiences for me. I arranged to get their story, which had been international news, retold on a local morning TV show. The station even wanted me to speak but I couldn't do that. I dealt with the mayor's anti-drug task force on a regular basis. My ex-wife and I donated a copy of the book they'd written, describing their search for their son, to 32 junior and senior high schools in the city where we lived. The profits from the book went entirely to the foundation for runaway kids. His family treated me like I was one of them. This meant a lot to me because I'd been an emotionally abandoned child. I did other things, too, in support of their work. The thing is, there was nothing I could do to produce any kind of positive outcome when I was assaulted. I'd have to go into a lot more details of that time for your to understand why that would be. I can't do that now.

In the case of this young man, though, I helped enable many positive things to happen. I couldn't bring him back, but good things still occurred and I was part of some of those. That's what got me through the PTSD.

I subsequently had two more episodes of PTSD. Right at the start of each, though, I now knew that I had to take immediate positive steps or I'd get into a really serious emotional mess. By taking positive action right near the start, each of these episodes was much less severe than the first.

The thing is Riven, until last Saturday night I hadn't experienced any feelings related to my assault in roughly 15 years. I don't know exactly how many. Saturday was the first really negative emotional response I've had while taking Androcur. Feelings of being violated were coming back. They were triggered by what was likely mostly an irrational construction of events in my mind. So this case was different from the first three. In those, there was something that happened to another person that triggered PTSD. I was always able to get something positive to happen in those, which is what saved me. Saturday, there was no one else that had been hurt so there was nothing I could do in my usual way of turning at least a small part of something really bad into something good. I was feeling really desperate because I couldn't see that my usual coping mechanism would work. For several days, however irrationally, I was feeling under attack. Fortunately, and probably because of the distance from the last PTSD time, I was able to talk myself out of this by the middle of the week.

This is far more than I ever intended to discuss. Even this doesn't describe the worst of what happened to both my ex-wife and me. Your post prompted me to write more about my own experience, which is actually a good thing. In part, that's because I need to be very aware that in my new emotional state I may be more susceptible to assault flashbacks. After Saturday's episode, though, I feel I'm at least aware that this can crop up. If it happens again, I think I'll be able to more quickly and effectively deal with it. I'm also very open to the idea that I may need to discuss this with a therapist given my new way of responding to things. I will make an appointment with a really good therapist I was seeing earlier in the year who specializes in PTSD. That wasn't what I was seeing her for at the time, although we touched on my experience. I'll also do some research on EMDR.

Despite the fact that it was really difficult for me to write a lot of this post, I'm feeling better now. I very much appreciate you willingness to share your own experience, Riven. That's helped me a great deal today.

I don't know that I can proof read this without starting to cry again. Please understand that if it's difficult to follow.

-todd

Thanks Todd,

The things you write about, and the way you write, cause me to feel a strong empathy. I don't suppose you'll be surprised to hear that I was also emotionally abandoned as a small child.

I'm very impressed by your ability to find a way to turn your negative energies around and make positive things happen. Your work in aid of runaway kids was a really good idea and seriously valuable on many levels. I applaud you. And I'm glad to hear that you plan to see your psychotherapist again. You have a heavy load and it's a really good idea 'to get it off your chest' from time to time.

I wonder if our mutual interest (or drive towards) hormone control, might be something to do with our having slightly similar emotional histories. There's food for thought!

I'm going through a good patch at the moment. My wife's cancer is being held in remission at the moment, my 15yo son is doing ok at school and has some nice friends. And I'm getting on well with my sisters - one of whom hass recently separated from her husband and has moved back to this country after 10 years abroad. I've nearly finished giving our kitchen and dining room a long overdue makeover, and I can't wait to get on with several other projects. The most important of these (to me) is to get back to my daily guitar practice sessions. I can't be sure how much of the recent improvement to my self esteem is due to getting my sleep back, and how much is due to finally coming to terms with the fact that I am now becoming the musician that I always wanted to be. I have a feeling though that the latter couldn't happen without the former - which is probably why I wanted to share my ideas on sleep with you. Talking of which, I must get some now.

All the best

Riven

The anger I described was because I couldn't accept how a loving God, being, creator, whatever could allow this awful death to occur to the young college man. I hate referring to him this way. I've been doing that partly because of issues of privacy for his family. His name was Mark. I was totally angry with God. Of course, by extension though not yet accepted by me, I was angry that a god could permit what had happened to me. That's when I came to the seemingly inevitable conclusion that there is no god. I can understand from my experience how some people might easily be atheists. I'm not trying to trivialize atheism and I accept that people could be atheists for many reasons. Truth is, although I attend church and get something out of the very open and accepting congregation I attend, I often view myself as an agnostic. I have returned, though, to believing in a creator or a creative force behind the universe. I feel totally loved and accepted by this creator.

Hey Riven,

Interesting thought about a possible link between similar emotional histories and desire for hormone control. Actually, that's probably closer to hormone annihilation in my case, for now anyway! There may indeed be something there.

I'm glad you're having a good period in your life now. Both you and your wife have been through a hell of a lot. I hope your wife's cancer remains in remission and that you two enjoy this good time together. Sounds like, all around, things are going well with your son and sisters.

If it involves anything other than painting, you will have exceeded my room makeover skills.

I've mentioned someplace along the way that I play piano and organ so it's really interesting to me that you play guitar. I absolutely relate to the feeling of becoming the musician you always wanted to be. I love the guitar and have wanted to learn it. Perhaps some day.

I'm really glad things are going well for you and your family. Thanks for all your great input and concern.

My best to you.

-todd

I've been receiving more reports lately, so far unconfirmed, of a eunuch humor effect. I've heard quite a bit about the 'eunuch calm' and although that hasn't, perhaps, been totally substantiated I do sometimes feel some amazingly calm.

What I've been hearing about this purported eunuch humor is that, for those on chemical castration, it tends to strike somewhere in the 7th - 9th week of treatment. Although I have absolutely no desire to contribute to unsubstantiated rumors, I do want to point out to anyone reading this that I, Todd - chemical eunuch, do indeed have a sense of humor. Thing is, it tends to be of a type that doesn't easily translate to written stuff like this.

By some strange coincidence, though, somewhere in my 8th or 9th week on Androcur, I posted on my birthday thread something that might be taken by some to be evidence of this eunuch humor. If you're interested, you can find it here: http://www.eunuch.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=12495

I felt only slightly uncomfortable when I wrote my response there to Kristoff's posting and only because this type of humor is new to me, at least to find it coming out of my own mouth, or fingers, anway! . I think what I was experiencing was a sneak attack of 'eunuch humor'. Seems like it could be a really good thing. I hope it develops further.