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Hi im questioning if i could benefit from trt. I'm 34m. 6' tall, 191lbs. in my late 20's i decided to try aas. since coming off my life has been a roller coaster. severe mood swings, lack of energy, lack of interests, depression, extreme anxiety at times. low to no libido (wife is feeling neglected). not feeling rested no mater how long I sleep. terrible memory. scary bad to the point my wife is concerned and it is affecting my job. accelerated hair loss. I recently changed pcp (in October of 22) who advised me to take ssri (zoloft) for depression and anxiety. She also advised my symptoms could be secondary hypogonadism due to history of aas abuse. So my T levels were checked and are as follows: shbg-28.1nmol/L, free Testosterone 88.6pg/ml, Bioavailable Testosterone 190 ng/dl, total testosterone 571 ng/dl. Four weeks ago, I asked dr to come off ssri, although my head is in the right place the physical side effects weren't worth taking it. She started lowering my dose weekly and now im off. could trt be an avenue to me and would it possibly benfit my overall condition?

AlphaMD's Answer

So the main questions here, did you feel good on AAS? How long ago was that? Typically with any steroid (Testosterone included, though we tend to not think of it as one) you'll have some natural suppression while on them. Did you do any PCT after using AAS?

Normally, your natural Testosterone & spermatic production can bounce back within 6 months to a year completely unassisted. With PCT you can get it back in 3-6 weeks. Take what your provider (a woman, not being sexist) has to say about AAS use with a grain of salt, as it's probably not something she has a lot of training on other than the social value "T & Steroids are bad".You have a lot of symptoms at play here. Anxiety and depression can cause the other issues you're talking about pretty easily. Are these naturally occurring or are you dealing with a lost of stress? All the medicine in the world can't help if your lifestyle or circumstance is the cause.

About Libido, since that's effecting your marriage - Libido is very much impacted by low Testosterone. It's also *extremely* able to be impacted by mental state. If you don't *feel* strong/desirable & your anxious about your sexual performance, then goodbye libido. Does it get better when you drink & your inhibition's are lowered? Then it may be mentally linked. If you're worried about performance, have you tried Cialis just to have confidence?

The hard part about this is that some mental health meds that might help with the anxiety & depression can also lower libido, which isn't what you want.-So some ideal outcomes might be:Your anxiety/depression which are affecting your sleep/recovery & thus your mood are impacting your memory (high levels of anxiety are very bad for memory) and your libido (because you can't focus on that with everything else going on) are lifestyle issues. Fix those issues in your life ASAP. Stressed about money? Have an unhappy household? Is your work incredibly stressful? Seriously examine these things & make *big* changes to get rid of the stress. See how that starts to change things.orYour general lack of ability to sleep, mood swings, memory, and libido are causing you to become super self conscious and they *are* the cause of anxiety and depression, which only makes them snowball worse. These things being fixed with having a more balanced TRT regimen could certainly snowball positively into fixing all these other issues.

My main take here (opinion) is - Make some changes & see what happens. Change 1 big thing at a time then simmer on it for a few weeks or a month. Don't change multiple medicines and factors at a time. For TRT you could always try it and see if it helps, if you don't feel like it does then take some PCT & then you know that it wasn't Testosterone that was the issue. But definitely do something.

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