Excellent question and I'll tell you up-front, it was a difficult decision because TRT came to my rescue when I was super stressed out, going through a divorce, losing my edge and drive, etc. etc...
Yes, main reason I stopped was for better sleep. I've optimized just about everything else and the last loose screw was the T. I had to accept the fact that prior to TRT, I would get at minimum "okay" sleep where I'd wake up and be ready to go most of the time. On TRT, I'd randomly get good sleep but most of it was lower quality and I felt the thing that was sustaining me was the hormone, not actual deep recovery through sleep. And, sleep apnea creeped in as well on TRT (light to mild, but enough to mess with REM).
I also had a few other negative affects like loss of sensitivity down there, huge reduction in semen...these have already come back.
The other thing, and this may sound funny...I felt like whatever hormones got pushed down (LH? FSH? no idea...) it caused a loss of deep satisfaction of life. The satisfaction I had was more surface level. Hard to describe. Almost like comparing Dopamine vs. Serotonin. Dopamine may have gone up, but actual satisfaction comes from Serotonin, which I felt like was driven down.
Mid-September will be 3 months off TRT, with no protocol to re-start. I am 100% feeling better (for now), am keeping even more active compared to being on TRT, controlling my food intake even better, and my sleep is clearly improving (my Whoop tracker's AI system confirms this with certainty). Let's see how months 3-6 go.
