T Is For Aggression?

Trey Smith

Those creative folks in the pharmaceutical industry have invented a new condition for males to get all worked up about: Low T.

You see, as males age, their testosterone level slowly decreases. It's a very natural process. I suspect that the aging body doesn't NEED as much testosterone as it did when it was younger. But, according to drug manufacturers, diminishing levels of this hormone is not what any upstanding male should desire, so they've come up with a variety of concoctions to keep testosterone levels artificially high.

I think I have a better understanding of testosterone than the average bloke due to the fact that I have Klinefelter's Syndrome. Because of this condition, my body does not produce adequate amounts of the hormone. Were it not for hormone replacement therapy -- I'm on the patch -- my compromised health system would be a lot more compromised.

I didn't discover that I had abnormally low levels of testosterone until I was in my early 30s. My 20s represented the worst decade of my life to date. I was beset by horrible mood swings that led some medical professionals to think that I had Bipolar Disorder. When I was up, I was sky high. When I was down, I was way, way down. I contemplated suicide many times.

It wasn't until my late mother insisted that I get my hormone levels checked that it was discovered that I had the hormonal makeup of a post-menopausal woman!! 

The normal range of testosterone for males is 200 - 1100.  I checked in at a very low 100.  As my endocrinologist explained it to me, the hormonal deficiency was most responsible for my dramatic mood swings.  Getting my hormone level up to the minimum end of the range would help to mitigate some of my issues.

At this juncture, you might be asking yourself: Why this post today?  What does this have to do with the stuff Trey's been writing lately?

Glad you asked!

For one, it has to do with an article I read today on CNN.com, "Masculinity, Mental Illness and Guns: A Lethal Equation?"

Motivations are hard to pin down, but gender is the single most obvious and intractable variable when it comes to violence in America. Men and boys are responsible for 95% of all violent crimes in this country. "Male criminal participation in serious crimes at any age greatly exceeds that of females, regardless of source of data, crime type, level of involvement, or measure of participation" is how the National Academy of Sciences summed up the extant research.

How does masculinity figure into this? From an early age, boys learn that violence is not only an acceptable form of conflict resolution, but one that is admired. However the belief that violence is an inherently male characteristic is a fallacy. Most boys don't carry weapons, and almost all don't kill: are they not boys? Boys learn it.

While I certainly agree that males tend to learn that violence is an acceptable mode of relating to others, I think there is another important facet to be considered: biology.

Getting back to my personal experience, once it was determined that I had very low testosterone levels, I was put on testosterone replacement therapy. After my very first injection, I had to deal with something I wasn't prepared for. My doctor had warned me that I most likely would experience a sharp increase in my libido -- that had never been an issue for me, so I didn't experience much of any change in that area -- but I did come face-to-face with a surge in feelings of aggression.

Prior to the replacement therapy, I would have been described as passive-aggressive. I rarely confronted anything straight on. I don't think I had a directly aggressive bone in my body! But all that changed dramatically once I started receiving testosterone injections.

It took me several months to get a handle on it. I simply wasn't used to having feelings that, when angry, I wanted to punch somebody out. It frightened me that I even would think such a thing. It was so outside of my frame of reference.

The upshot here is that, while I agree that some aspects of violence are learned, I think various forms of aggression come more readily to males because our testosterone levels are higher than females. Part of the explanation is born of biology.

The second motivation of this entry is as an addendum to my earlier post of today, I Keep Deleting This Post. These three conditions that I must deal with -- Klinefelter's, Asperger's and Schizotypal Personality Disorder -- make me a rather unique case. I think that the interplay amongst them has a lot to do with the challenges I face.

They each possess their own distinct symptomatology and a lot of these symptoms bang into each other. At times, a symptom of one mitigates a symptom of another while, at other times, a symptom of one exacerbates one or more symptoms of the others.

No wonder I feel so screwed up about half the time!