Over the past two years, I’ve had thousands of people visit my website www.testosteroneaddiction.com searching for education, understanding and research regarding testosterone replacement therapy.

I’m glad to see the surgeon general making his request to these prescribing physicians. This is a wakeup call to all physicians. It’s a new awareness around all prescription medications, many of which can have dramatic, devastating effects on men and women.

Therapeutic replacement of testosterone is now what I have come to call the “middle-age drug of choice.” The use of testosterone replacement therapy has become a magic bullet for staying young. It’s also a Three Billion Dollar industry and projected to grow to Five Billion by 2018.

I’ve heard from some behavioral healthcare providers and physicians who are perplexed because they are seeing more and more men and women come into their practice with extremely high testosterone levels and risky behavior problems.

Over the years the behavioral health industry has evolved due to more available research that gives them evidence based approaches to treatment. We’ve come a long way in understanding alcohol and drug abuse from marijuana, heroin, opioids and other psychoactive drugs.  But one thing I hear more and more from providers is there is not enough research regarding testosterone.

Recently I was having a conversation with an attorney who was contemplating a class action lawsuit against the makers of testosterone. He told me the reason they chose not to pursue it right now was that he didn’t think the jury would have any sympathy for the users because they are middle age, successful, educated professionals.

In 2014 Anthony Bourdain, of Parts Unknown, the famous chef who travels to obscure places around the world eating delicacies from each culture, took a detour from his typical show and decided to travel to his home state of Massachusetts to shed some light on the global Opioid and Heroin epidemic.

In this episode, he interviews Dr. Ruth Potee, a family physician in Greenfield, Massachusetts. She explained, “The new heroin addict is a white, middle class, kid next door.” Where is this epidemic stemming from, he asks? She replied that “It is believed to come from the over prescribing of pain medications, such as OxyContin.” In 1996 sales of pain medication went from 45 million to 3.1 billion in 2010. Bourdain asks Dr. Potee, who made a mistake here? Her response:

In this episode, he shares a promotional video from Purdue pharmaceuticals. I would encourage you to watch this episode it is very enlightening. You can find it on Youtube Season 4 episode 7 Parts Unknown with Anthony Bourdain.

So why am I sharing this story, because like the opioid epidemic we are facing we have an epidemic with testosterone replacement therapy starting to come to the surface like a great white shark in the Atlantic ocean. The two go hand and hand, prescription medication aimed to reduce pain or prescription medication to increase your libido. Both are now wreaking havoc in families across the nation.

With the Opioid addiction, we are experiencing more deaths and overdoses and with testosterone you’ll start to see an increase in sex addiction, rage and sexually transmitted disease.

Over the last two years men and women have called or emailed me and some have been bold enough to share their own not so good experiences with testosterone. I’ve also had men and women who are looking for hope because their spouse or family member is using testosterone and they need help.

Men and women coming to the network are looking for resources, therapists, education, information and connecting with local providers who can help them.

At Testosterone Addiction Recovery we understand that testosterone is an emerging addiction. We work with men and women who are experiencing side effects and destructive behaviors because of testosterone replacement therapy. We uncover and discover the underlying cause that initially led them down the path of using testosterone replacement therapy and help you and your loved ones return to homeostasis in mind, body and spirit.