I have always believed most of my PAWS symptoms to be low T and always told myself that when I got money I would go to an endocrinologists for testing but never followed through. I believe I have found the key to my recovery problems. I am a 38yr old male, who has been addicted to heroin and methadone for 20yrs. My PAWS symptoms match the symptoms of low T to a.... well T. Thank you for giving me the push to follow through with a checkup because I always wind up relapsing due to the prolonged PAWS, which should have been obvious, especially with such a long usage history as being low Testosterone. You have given me the hope that I can combat the never ending malaise, lack of motivation and depression that always does me in. It is so obvious but I have always been afraid of messing up my natural production forever by self medicating a problem that I had hoped would correct itself. I tried to run a cycle about 90 days into recovery once but I ran into money problems about 4-5 weeks in of IM injections of test cypionate at a medium unknown dosage that I cant recall because it was administered by an experienced friend. I do remember it doing wonders for my energy and it had a profound effect on my confidence, which I remember as being an amazing, life changing effect but believed it had negatively affected my sleep at the time. It was honestly a wonderful feeling that was better than any recreational drug I had ever done and was what I had been looking for during all my addiction and experimentation. You have definitely stirred my memory and peaked my interest. Do you ever get rage and how does it effect your sleep?
Im happy this thread could spark some newfound hope for you. I have a similar story, I’m younger though so my opiate addiction / periods of sobriety / relapse cycle has been around 7 years now.
Honestly I think before I even got addicted to opiates I had low T because I was always low energy, depressed, lacked muscle and was pretty small for my age, and just kinda didn’t have good confidence or feelings about myself.
I think I’ve gotten accustomed to how I feel on them, at the beginning I may have been slightly more angry but roid rage and anger as others on here will attest to is really somewhat of a myth. Yes you may feel you are more capable of violence or rise quicker to anger but really it’s not an issue. I mean I’ve always considered myself a pretty angry person and I don’t think they’ve made it worse and as I’ve gotten older I’ve calmed down a lot.
Sleep wise I won’t lie, it may make falling asleep a bit harder. I’ve found I can still be energetic and successful with less sleep, all I really need is 6 hours. As long as you stay away from Tren or other more intense steroids, you should sleep good and get used to it.
Steroids have without a doubt drastically changed my life. I can’t just recommend them to everyone but shit the way I look at it is the risks of using low dose testosterone compared to shooting heroin or being addicted to drugs aren’t even close. If I die at 50 or 60 cause I lived a happy, motivated, in shape, sexual crazed life cause of a heart attack, it’s a hell of a lot better an outcome than being another fentanyl or suicide statistic. Steroids and the hormone system are serious things and messing with your endocrine system can cause some mood swings, anxiety, bouts of depression and other side effects like high blood pressure.
But overall I feel way more confident, happy in general, and have mostly a bright outlook on my future and I can tell you I hadn’t felt that way in years before I started. Honestly I was in maybe my 6th rehab after another failed attempt of sobriety and knew I probably would be back because even sober living a clean life my mind and my history of depression was gonna lead me right back to drugs, it never failed.
Sometimes we really gotta look deeper and figure out what the hell is the reason I keep returning to drugs? And a lot of it has to do with our brains and our bodies and not functioning normally. I really think fixing testosterone gave me a fighting chance to not just be another overdose news article.