My SHBG was 80 nmol/L pre-TRT and pretty quickly came down to ~40 nmol/L after I started.
I never felt good on injections except for an initial very short honeymoon phase. After that I actually felt worse than pre-TRT in a lot of ways. My depression and overthinking tendencies went away, which is amazing, but I felt completely flat; zero drive/motivation, no more dreams or plans for the future, excited about absolutely nothing...basically complete anhedonia and apathy/lethargy.
I tried twice/week, daily injections, anywhere from 100 to 200mg/week of Test Cyp. Never worked. Tried using a small dose of AI a few times but each time after an initial great 24-48 hours I started feeling worse. I went down to 0.0625mg 2x/week, so hard to do less. Maybe I needed more but last time I tried the AI my E2 sensitive was 22pg/mL and Free T 24ng/dL, so I doubt lowering my E2 even more would've been good, but who knows.
Only time I ever felt great was for a few days on cream. I was doing 2 clicks AM + 2 clicks PM (200mg/mL Empower HRT base) and feeling pretty wired and very aggressive, but also very confident and great libido. My DHT levels at trough however came back at 500ng/dL (not a typo). I only gave it 2 weeks to be fair but the insanely high DHT kind of scared me for long term use, so I dropped to 1 click AM + 1 click PM.
5 days or so after dropping the dose I experienced the most amazing 3 days of my entire life. Amazing sleep, genuine interest in things other than sex. Started reading books again, working out with enthusiasm instead of dragging myself through everything, etc...
Unfortunately, after that very short period of time I went back to feeling "meh...". My test results came back and even on just 1 clicks AM/PM my DHT was still 360ng/dL. At that point I was going to try applying to different parts of my body but I ran out of cream and changed my next prescription to Test Cyp again to try just 100mg/week in 2x/week injections.
Felt great for 2-3 weeks and then back to feeling like shit to the point where I don't even have the energy to work out.
