It's been a while since I've been here. Probably 3 years or so. A little background. I'm pushing 50, married with 4 kids, love my wife & love my kids. I'm a strong Christian believer but I don't believe that castration, chemical or surgery, used as a tool to bring a person under control and/or give him calmness is wrong. I know the Bible quite well and I find no scriptural basis to say castration is wrong.

About 6 years ago I started having out of control sexual urges. If I would have allowed them to continue I would have got in big trouble so I sought help. One of the first revelations if you will that surfaced was that I'm bipolar. That would help explain a lot. We later found out I had OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder). Double whammy. My doctors first put me on high doses of Seroquel to control the bipolar. It worked. Only problem is that it messes with your hormones (T-levels). Now to compound that my docs prescribed a pretty high dose of Lexapro. Lexapro is what's called a SSRI (goggle it). SSRI's really kills your hormone production. Long story short when I had my T levels checked about 4 years ago they were around 70 ng/dl and they've stayed pretty close to that level up until I pulled a brain dead move a couple of months ago.

A couple of months ago I went in to my primary doc because I thought that it would be nice to make love to my wife again. Just a couple of problems here with that theory. First, she's on a fairly high level of Zoloft, which kills libido, and she has had no desire for sex for about 4 years now. Second, with my low T levels I was a happy guy. My rage, anger, quick tempers, & crazy sex drive was gone and in its place a closer walk with God, a stronger relationship with my wife, & much friendlier and witty with other people. Basically I was a really great guy for once.

Anyway, back to a couple of weeks ago. I went to my primary doc & she checked my hormones and about flipped. She gave me a big shot with a long needle in the butt with a big dose of T replacement to give me a jump start. Man, that one hurt! She also gave me a high dose T rub that I rubbed on my shoulder, chest, & arm once a day to boost my T. About a week into this T replacement endeavor bad things started to happen. I started getting angry again, my short fuse was back, my appetite for porn was back, I got manicky as all get out! I got so wound up and strung out on a manic high from my bipolar that I went about 40 hours with no sleep! My wife informed me in no uncertain manner that I was no fun to be around anymore and that she was about to get fed up with me. That's how bad things got in 1 1/2 weeks!

Thank God my Sis who is really pretty sharp and educated in this stuff stepped in. She sat me down and asked me what in the world was going on. We talked for quite a while over a couple of days & I realized I needed off of the T. My Sis agreed. I then went to my wife and set her down and explained to her what had happened as if she didn't know already, she did, women are good at that. Anyway, she wholeheartedly agreed for me to go off of T and I did.

It's been about 5 days now since I quit my T therapy. I saw my psyc doc today & told him what happened. He agreed with my sis & wife about getting off of the T & he bumped my meds up for a short time until the T gets out of my system. Tomorrow I see my primary doc who prescribed the T and my talk doc for support on going back "T-free" for lack of a better term.

When I see my primary doc tomorrow I've got a page full of stuff to talk to her about. I've done a ton of research on the health problems & risks with low T such as osteoporosis, muscle loss, weight gain, and gynecomastia. I do internet based research for a nonprofit so doing the research came quite easy to me I might add. I hope she appreciates what I did to help us both out. I'm curious to see how tomorrow turns out. I'll let you know.

Just curious... Has anyone here done the chemical thing successfully for more then a year then changed their mind and took T-therapy such as Androgel only to find out going back was wrong? If so, how long did it take you to get your T count back down?

Thanks!

I was on chem for over a year at the time, this goes back a few years, and when I had some other health issues my doc put me on androgel. That lasted less then a month. Like you a became that same old jerk that nobody liked and most of friends had gladly forgotten about.

Went off the T and back on siterone. on that for a couple of years until my testicales completely died. Now I am a drug free eunuch and couldnt be happier. Take lots of vitamins and calcium and try to work to stay healthy and the trade off is well worth it. Good Luck

Dave

Thanks!

I've got an appointment with my primary care doc @ 11:00 this morning. Could be interesting. I'm going to ask her to put me on a calcium treatment which is going to have to be IV administered as I'm getting pretty close (at least i hope I am) to having gastric bypass surgery. Surgery is close enough now that we're in the process of looking at all of my meds & vitamins to see what we can do about changing them to a liquid form or possibly injection forms because of the malabsorption that gastric bypass causes. I also found out that a long term osteoporosis treatment & prevention plan can also help alleviate chronic back pain which I have.

From the FWIW department. Yesterday I went and saw my urologist for testicular pain in my left testes. Why they have pain and absoloutely nothing I don't understand but anyway he asked me where the pain is. I showed him and he did some feeling around asking me if it hurt in different places. He finally came to the painful spot & squeezed it a little. When he did that he asked "Is this the spot?" As my knees buckled and I got nauseous I said "YES!" It was at that point being a true unuch would have been nice!