Altered States
From the dancefloor to the prescription pad, what does Gen X’s open attitude to altered states and synthetically enhanced wellness reveal about the hormonal health opportunity?
Wearing glasses used to really bother me. A speccy from the age of 16, my teenage brain worried about what would happen if I got caught in the apocalypse and I couldn’t rely on fragile lenses or survive any impending dystopia with myopia.
Clearly, I don’t feel that way now at the age of 50 and having made peace with my performatively oversized Jimmy Fairly varifocals. But I do have one friend who still refuses to use sat nav in case he forgets how to find his ‘own way’ when the satellites fail. “But think of the places you can go?” I teased him.
In our X-Types report, we’ve made a point of categorising Gen X-ers as digital settlers not digital natives; a generation equally fluent in deep human connection and digital utility, sceptical of technology’s promises but competent in its tools.
(Brands, business and workplaces take note - this is not a limitation, it is a superpower - especially considering how we are currently negotiating the terms of our partnership with synthetic intelligence).
But how do we feel about a future of ever more synthetically enhanced bodies?
A complicated comedown
In many ways, Gen X is a chemical generation. Yes, their formative years may have been influenced by a consumer era shaped by the birth of the purpose-led business, such as The Body Shop, with its anti-animal testing and pro-natural ethos that became a precursor to today’s so-called clean movement.
But Gen X possess an innate duality - and they were also defined by the dancefloor and the drugs that went with it.
From the Haciênda to the orbital raves circling the M25, from Madchester’s baggy euphoria to the superclub era of Ministry of Sound and Cream, the late 1980s and early 1990s gave this generation a mass, cross-class, multiracial experience of communal joy, built on house music - and MDMA.
The comedown was complicated, though. Even as the rave generation was finding chemical communion on dancefloors, a parallel script was being written for their inner lives. Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac Nation (1994) became the generational text for a different kind of chemical relationship - one in which psychological distress was increasingly understood through a diagnostic and pharmaceutical lens.
Gen X became the first generation to be systematically medicated for responses to trauma and adverse experience rather than discrete mental health disorders.
Gen X Women are now navigating the menopause B-roads of their hormonal journey. NHS HRT prescriptions in England increased 370% in a decade (from 3.1 million items in 2015-16 to 14.7 million in 2024-25, according to NHSBAS data), and younger Gen X women are embracing HRT as a lifestage enhancement. However, they are finding that the diagnostic frameworks available to them still don’t adequately reflect their lived experience.
I’m not going to burn too much character count on menopause and how under-diagnosis, mislabelling, cancer scares and claims of HRT not being ‘natural’ have limited access to the one treatment that can single-handedly extend female healthspan. No, there’s plenty of wordage already out there on this.
But I will ask (in this one instance), what about the men?
Special offers in the Andropause Aisle
Is there – not a chemical - but a hormonally altered future for men too? Will we see the Andropause Aisle appear in supermarkets? Alright, so men don’t experience the hormonal ‘cliff’ that Miranda July brilliantly highlights in All Fours with the horror-filled shock typical of Gen X-ers who have spent their entire lives in a constant state of adolescent reinvention and are now being hit extra hard by the physical reality of growing up.
There is a meaningful hormonal story for men – and it might just start with Gen X men. NHS testosterone-related items dispensed in the community increased by 52% between 2020-21 and 2024-25 (see NHSBSA Prescription Cost Analysis 2024/25). However, much of the concern around rising TRT use in the UK relates to younger men using it to enhance muscle mass and physique without a confirmed testosterone deficiency diagnosis, driven significantly by TikTok and social media promotion - and serviced by the private sector (see The Pharmaceutical Journal).
But what if this story was delivered to Gen X men in a relevant way, through new products and services?
Gen X’s open attitude to altered states and synthetically enhanced health reveals not just an age-related opportunity around hormonal health, but a longer-term prospect focused on supporting lifelong hormonal health, from teens to later years, and for all genders.
Now, there’s a thought for any brand in the beauty, health and wellness market.
What do you think? Thoughts and prayers are welcome:
Video Stats:
1.NHS HRT prescriptions: +370% in one decade
14.7 million items in 2024/25 vs 3.1 million in 2015/16: (source: NHSBSA)
2.Global menopause wellness market: $37.84 billion by 2035 (source: Business Research Insights)
4.Male testosterone prescriptions: +52% Since 2020 (source: NHSBSA)
5.Male androgen therapy market: 15% of women’s menopause market:
Male androgen replacement therapy: $5.514 Billion by 2035 (source: Market Research Future)
Female menopause wellness: $37.84 Billion by 2035 (source: Business Research Insights)
Calculation: $5.5B ÷ $37.84B = 14.5% ≈ 15%
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