I've been off testosterone for a few years now. When I was on it, I reacted to it in a way which several doctors and laypeople with personal experience found strange. Those years were torturous, and though I'm in a much better place now, I still can't figure out why I would have such a weird (and awful) reaction to it.
Before I went on T, I'd tried birth control pills and Lupron. They made me crabby, hungry, depressed and so on, but long after I stopped taking them it only got worse. I didn't miss menstruating...far from it, I was glad to not deal with that. On T, I had the usual masculinization, I grew more body/facial hair, my parts got bigger and my voice got lower--all of which I was pleased with--but I started having irregular menstrual bleeding. This was on a normal dose. I also had an appetite increase, which is an understatement. I could not stop eating. When I could not eat, it was like having a gnawing worm in my gut that would not calm down, to the point where I couldn't think about anything else. This, of course, caused dramatic weight gain. My fat packed in all the typical female places, though. My cheeks, my chest (especially my chest, which ballooned to gross-out proportions,) my backside and my legs, in addition to my stomach where I guess it "should have." I was always tired. I had no energy. I could barely leave bed without my entire body aching. Every time I moved, I ached and ached. If I thought the gloomy mood was bad before, it got worse. I was pretty much suicidal. I cried all the time. Sometimes I feigned anger, but it was more of a hysterical sobbing sadness than the anger I'd experienced before--this from someone who once wrote about how "rage made me strong." I'd had absolutely NO history of real depression prior to this, either. I tried medication after medication, and none of them did anything helpful. No noticeable libido increase happened either.
Someone I was dating at the time commented, half-jokingly, "are you sure that's testosterone they're giving you?" As opposed to estrogen, she later clarified. I got lots of "hmm, that's odd" responses from endocrinologists when I told them about my symptoms, too.
When the dosage was lowered, nothing changed except a tiny bit less soreness and the menstrual periods from Hades. Completely irregular, copious amounts of blood, and PMDD that lasted for three weeks. After weaning myself off completely, the irregularity stopped but the three-week PMDD didn't. The hungries kept going, except for the single week out of every month when I had a normal appetite. Luckily, I had a total hysterectomy and it's not an exaggeration to say it saved my life. No more hungries, no more crushing depression, no more of the crappy things I'd been dealing with since I was eighteen and maybe longer.
What are the possible reasons I would react to T like this? Is this reaction even abnormal at all, or does it fall within the scope of normal?
