The Castrati Conundrum: A Vitamin Dilemma in the Age of Chemical Eunuchry

I am in the vitamin aisle of a suburban pharmacy. A place that smells faintly of bleach and unfulfilled New Year’s resolutions.

There comes a time in a prostate-cancer enhanced modern man's life when he must make peace with the fact that he is, medically speaking, no longer a man. Not metaphorically, not emotionally, but hormonally. A moment marked not by a rite of passage or heroic battle, but rather by a blood test and the smug satisfaction of a radiation oncologist who has perhaps, in another life, auditioned for the role of Pontius Pilate.

“It’s official,” he declared with the sort of restrained triumph usually reserved for academic promotions or successful sourdough starters. “You are now castrated.” He said this while holding my PSA results like they were the Rosetta Stone, solving the ancient riddle of my now-comatose prostate. Castrated. A word that evokes medieval choirs, Byzantine courts, and perhaps an audition for the role of Royal Eunuch, should the Windsors ever revive Game of Thrones with a more documentary approach.

In another century, this might have led to a promising musical career. Castrati were all the rage once; icons of pitch-perfect misery, high notes bought at the price of their balls. I, however, have no musical talent and considerably fewer silk waistcoats. There is no Baroque choir in need of my services, no royal court seeking a eunuch with a background in spreadsheets and prostate oncology.

But alas, in this millennium, the title comes with none of the prestige, and even less of the pageantry. There was no ceremonial snipping, no aria from the choir loft, no velvet robes. Just a chemical coup, executed quietly by ADT (Androgen Deprivation Therapy), which sounds like something your boarding school rugby coach would have prescribed for "character building." ADT, for the unfamiliar, is like hormonal Brexit. Your testosterone packs its bags and leaves without much of a plan, and everyone pretends this is going to be just fine.

Now stripped of the biochemical trappings of manhood, I embarked on a journey to the local pharmacy. Not, as in years past, for deodorant or condoms or some rugged shampoo with the word “blast” in it, but for vitamins. Because when your body has been biochemically reclassified as a beige zone between categories, supplements become the last flimsy scaffolding holding you together.

The vitamin aisle greeted me with the sterile cheeriness of late capitalism: rows upon rows of bottles promising vitality, virility, bone support, mood enhancement, immune function, and, one presumes, absolution. A place where gender norms are not questioned but colour-coded. Blue labels for the men. Pink and lavender for the ladies. “Men’s Health.” “Women’s Wellness.” “Silver Men.” “Pre-Menopausal Support.” Each bottle offering a neat identity in pill form, assuming you still qualify for one.

And here lay the rub. Or rather, the existential riddle: which one should I buy? I, the newly minted eunuch, floating hormonally in uncharted waters, was faced with a question no man hopes to confront while holding a plastic basket and being serenaded by the in-store radio's eighth consecutive Ed Sheeran song: Should I buy the men’s or the women’s vitamins?

Let us examine the contenders.

Men’s vitamins: Formulated for performance, stamina, and, one suspects, erectile optimism. Laden with zinc, saw palmetto, and vague references to “prostate support,” as if the gland is now some overworked barista that just needs a little encouragement. These supplements are clearly intended for men who still produce testosterone, grow chest hair with purpose, and consider BBQ sauce a primary food group. I am no longer such a man. My testosterone levels have been dragged into the underworld, and even the ferryman looked unimpressed.

Women’s vitamins: Here lies a different promise. Calcium for bones. Iron for blood. Vitamin B for mood, and perhaps an implied spiritual resilience one might require when dealing with society. These are designed for bodies shaped by oestrogen, fluctuating hormones, and the burden of living in a world that still thinks “girlboss” is empowering. And yet... as someone whose oestrogen now outnumbers my testosterone with the kind of landslide that would make North Korean elections look competitive, they feel oddly... appropriate.

Of course, there is no bottle for me. No “Castrated Blend: For the Post-Testosterone Gentleman.” No shelf labelled For the Androgenically Ambiguous. I looked in vain for a bottle shaped like a question mark.

So I stood there for a good ten minutes, clutching a basket, pondering whether to commit to a gender I’ve medically left behind, or to one I was never assigned, but am increasingly biochemically adjacent to. A young clerk walked by. I considered asking him for help, but how to phrase it? “Excuse me, which vitamin best supports someone who has recently been rendered testicularly obsolete?” But here's the catch: there is no supplement for “Eunuch, Post-Oncology.” No bottle labelled For Those Who’ve Been Castrated by Science but Still Need to Function in Capitalist Society. There are no rainbow-coloured capsules that restore your identity after it's been quietly dissolved by the marvels of modern medicine.

In the end, I chose neither. I bought a bottle of multivitamin gummies shaped like woodland creatures, with no gender, no judgment, and a faint taste of existential despair. I chewed two as instructed and washed them down with tap water and a whisper of my former masculinity.

And let’s be honest: I miss testosterone. Not in the way some men fetishise it. Not as some meathead cult of lifting and grunting, but in the quiet, unspoken ways. The steadiness. The absence of hot flashes. The vague ability to tolerate other people without imagining how many bricks it would take to wall myself in. These days, I’m as emotionally stable as a Victorian asylum patient on laudanum.

I finally picked up a generic bottle of multivitamins labelled simply “Adults.” A bland, sexless compromise. Like hospital food. Or the Queen’s Christmas speech. It promised nothing but “daily support.” Which, honestly, is all I’m asking for these days. I chewed them in the parking lot like they were communion wafers. No ceremony. No choir. Just me and the slow, crumbling knowledge that my body is now a bio-hazardous compromise between man and shrug.

Because here’s the thing they don’t tell you at diagnosis: cancer doesn’t just try to kill you. Sometimes it lets you live. But it rearranges the furniture. And when you walk back into the room that was once your body, nothing is quite where you left it.

Still, one must supplement. Because in the kingdom of the chemically neutered, sometimes the best you can do is swallow your bears, go home, and try not to read too much into what flavour they made the ovaries.