I dearly wish I could have had an ordinary sex drive, one where an effort to not masturbate causes something as ordinary as images of men or women to flood my mind, or fetishes that were merely gross or weird, rather than evil. Alas, my brain generates sexual signals whenever I see children. From 17 until 24, I easily ignored these feelings and stuck to ordinary pornography (compared to more dark things, at least) and did not fantasize, gaze or otherwise long. However, around 24 a sort of background noise developed in my heart until it became an urge, and soon I could no longer fall asleep without being plunged into affection for children during the twilight phase of wakefulness. This turned into an exercise of falling asleep while watching TV, cold showers and baths to shock myself out of it, and when those failed, simply drinking coffee in the evening and staying up for a day or two at a time, often times going a week with less than 4 hours of sleep each night. Eventually the feelings flooded into my daylight hours. I would have these "attacks" or "episodes" where the buzzing sensation flooded into my hands and fingers, lips and tongue, and pleasure seeped through my body with the need to do something. Zen meditation failed utterly. Non judgmental awareness saw a flood of images that were caustic to my spirit, and each time I tried I felt like I was on fire. I was once a devoted student of the practice, but now I haven't practiced Zazen in two and a half years. Thankfully I found a reliable rescue technique; video games, with racing games like Waverace 64 and Cruisin' USA being the most highly effective, by far. Still, each time I rescued myself, I wondered if this would be the occasion that the technique failed and then I would be drowning with absolutely nothing to save me. I did much research on pharmacological interventions, and after every previous one was exhausted (risperidone, sertraline medium dose, then very high dose, cyproterone acetate, and added raloxifene), I resorted to grey-market transgender hormone therapy purchased from the Internet as a means of chemical castration, after my requests for a GnRH agonist were repeatedly denied. I have been on estrogen for 10 months now. One of the doctors finally relented and agreed to prescribe the HRT instead of having me buy it off the Internet. I might be able to get surgery through them. My testosterone is still as high as below-normal, and this appointment will see some actual guidance in getting me down to castrate levels. My appearance will then start to change, but there's a significant chance that these pedophilic feelings, whose urges have already been attenuated, will be crippled forever and possibly disappear entirely. I'll be seeing you from the other side. AMA
