There is a little phrase that shows up in Archive postings from time to time, "Your mileage may vary." One person's life changes following castration may contrast greatly with another person's life changes following castration. That said, there are many people whose life changes are very similar to the life changes of many, if not most, other people after castration.
I may be able to usefully illustrate this with aspects of my own life.
My purpose in seeking and obtaining a bilateral orchiectomy in 1986 was to keep as much sexual interest and function as possible. Why so? Because there is a form of genetically-based cancer in my family that seems to have resulted in men dying sadly young. This condition has a name, familial adenomatous polyposis, and the average age of death as I have found it in the medical literature is 42 years in the absence of sufficiently drastic surgical interventions.
For example, my dad's and brother's testicles are no less dead than mine are. However, their brains are also dead, and mine is alive, and is alive at an age considerably greater than my dad's and brother's ages when their brains died.
There are many different reasons why some people (men, if you believe in the notion that there are only two genders; a belief I do not hold)) may seek, and may obtain, castration. In my view, no such reason is necessarily more or less appropriate than is any other reason.
For myself, as puberty became mostly finished, I found that I had acquired a biological clock that had a four to five day cycle. One way or another, no matter what I did, awake or asleep, I would have an orgasm within five days of having one. Two of those at night, waking up wet, cold, and clammy "down there," and it came to my mind that cleaning up the mess so I could get back to sleep was messing up what I wanted to do while awake during daytime.
Both of my parents had studied biology in college, I had access to a decent selection of college level biology books. Being competently what might now be named, "geeky-nerdy," I read up on methods of getting uninterrupted sleep, and found one. If I activated my ejaculation reflex while I was awake before it activated itself while I was asleep, I found my waking quality of life to be vastly better than it was if I was awakened at night by my ejaculation reflex having activated itself.
There are two main male sexual spinal gangia based reflexes. erection and ejaculation. For me, my erection reflex is essentially unchanged. In contrast with that reflex, my ejaculation reflex ceased to self-activate within a very few weeks after my orchiectomy. Yet, as an act of supposed willful purpose, when, as happens from time to time, I "voluntarily" activate my ejaculation reflex, it "feels" almost the same as when I was "intact."
Because my purpose was doing everything reasonable that I thought would reduce my cancer risk, I have no personal experience with anything except surgical castration.
There is a book by David Ruben, M.D., "Everything you always wanted to know about sex " but were afraid to ask," the first, 1969 copyright date, edition has what I regard as reasonably decent and accurate physiology information. That information is, in my view, almost completely absent in the second, 1999 copyright date, edition. The first edition made the New York Times "Best Seller" list; there are many copies yet to be found in public libraries according to what I found on www(dot)worldcat(dot)org earlier today.
I have both the first and second editions of Ruben's "Everything you wanted to know..." Regarding castration issues, the first edition may be useful, I find the second edition to be essentially irrelevant regarding castration concerns.
Erection and the sensations of ejaculation have not notably changed for me because of castration. And I have not been bothered by a nocturnal emission since mid-1986. If, somehow, my ejaculation reflex were to self-activate during some night while I am asleep, the amount of ejaculate would not be any bother whatsoever, and I would not, as happened with the onset of puberty, wake up feeling wet, cold, and clammy "down there."
W
dutchman (imported) wrote: Tue Aug 28, 2012 1:31 am
hat happens exactly after chemical castration
is so unpredictable in exact details as to inform me that wanting to know exactly what will happen is wanting to know something that is often impossible to know without going through chemical castration.
For men dealing with prostate cancer, it may be that chemical castration is appropriately effective; for the genetic condition I have, and taking into careful account my family history, I have a lingering hunch that my having used chemical, instead of surgical, castration would have been a sadly effective suicide method.