Birth Control Ruined My Life For 12 Years. Here's What I Wish I Knew Before I Got On It.

I’m a staunch traditionalist, so, no—I wasn’t doing that back then. I’d simply come down with a terrible case of cystic acne, and I didn’t know what else to do. At the start of the 10th grade, I was drowning in three different prescription creams, multiple courses of antibiotics, and Accutane-ordained blood tests. I had seen every dermatologist and skin specialist under the sun, but no matter what I tried, I seemed destined for a life of pimply cheeks and judgmental gazes. After all, when you have zits on every corner of your face, people start assuming that you’re doing something wrong—you forgot to renew your Proactiv subscription or are eating too much chocolate—and when you’re 15, those sorts of sidelong glares can be pretty hard to weather. Coming into my local Sephora to buy some thick-coverage foundation, for instance, I was greeted by a saleswoman who sneered at my appearance and recommended that I try “washing my face.” Why, thank you—I really hadn’t thought of that! Suffice it to say that I was feeling rightfully hopeless waddling into my gynecologist’s office to explore alternative acne treatments, and I was ready to do literally anything for a clear face and societal acceptance. The promise of a miracle drug Kicking my heels against the back of the treatment chair, I listed out the solutions I had tried to no avail, and was elated to hear that there was yet another magic pill that could set my face in order. If nothing else had worked, the dermatologist reasoned, then my acne was hormonal, and we needed to address its root cause. The year was 2012. We hadn’t yet reached the apex of radical feminism during 2016’s #MeToo craze, but our world was certainly moving in that direction, and birth control already was all the rage in OB-GYN offices across the country. As for me, I was told nothing about the pill other than that it contained a healthy dose of estrogen that would tame my acne and finally give me back my pretty face. You can imagine that, for a 15-year-old who was starting to care about what boys might think, the pill seemed like a miracle drug. Virtually no negative information about the pill had been disclosed to either me or my parents. But maybe even the promise of beauty and acceptance wouldn’t have compelled me to take that infamous pill had I been properly informed of its many dangers. In fact, virtually no negative information about the pill had been disclosed to either me or my parents. And it would take years before it occurred to me that my ensuing medical problems might have something to do with synthetic hormones. When everything changed Several months after starting my treatment, I suffered from what I was convinced had to be a stroke. What else could it have been when, completely out of the blue, my hand grew numb, I lost the ability to form coherent words, a floating crescent checkerboard infested my field of vision, and I grew so nauseous that even chemotherapy-strength nausea drugs didn’t make me feel better? I was carted off to the hospital and, waking up from a deep sleep the following morning, was diagnosed with familial hemiplegic migraine, a rare type of chronic migraine whose symptoms resembled those of a stroke. I was told that the disorder was genetic and that there was absolutely nothing I could do—I would have to live with these episodes for the rest of my life because we knew little about this particular type of migraine, which afflicted fewer than several thousand people on the planet. Luckily, the symptoms were transitory, which meant that, unlike with a stroke, my body would return to normal following the duration of the attack. But it was still no fun to be literally unable to speak and to be throwing up all over the place for hours on end. The doctor didn’t have much else to say, but boy, did I WebMD myself to death that week. I kept reading horror stories about migraine-plagued young women who routinely participated in experimental brain trials—if their migraines hadn’t gotten so disabling that they were forced to withdraw from society entirely. The worst part was that, to most people, a “migraine” was just a bad headache, so no one understood why I suddenly had to dash home in the middle of class or during an important social event when I could no longer see or form words. And though I was lucky enough to suffer from migraines only once every three months, I began to dread the coming of those days, planning my life around the doomed “migraine week” to make sure I wasn’t going anywhere or doing anything important. I was registered with disability services in college, and occasionally, I had to miss exams if an attack happened to annoy me at the wrong time. In short, I was living with a chronic illness that made my life into a living hell every several months—especially after I’d lived the first 16 years of my life without knowing what it was like to want to form words but to be physically unable to do so. I was living with a chronic illness that made my life into a living hell every several months. By my senior year of college, my migraines had worsened. Between a nasty breakup and graduate school applications, I was stressed out of my mind, and no doubt the stress was having a negative effect on my overall neurological health. During one migraine episode, I was unable to hold down even the smallest drop of water, and I grew so parched as a result that they had to hook me up to an IV machine just to pump water into my veins. Several years after my initial diagnosis, I decided to challenge the “there was nothing you could do about it” narrative by consulting with a new neurologist. Surely, we had made some scientific advancements as a society that could introduce a treatment plan for my condition other than “just live with it.” My new neurologist was a young Indian woman in her early 30s, and she was terrified to hear that I had been on estrogen for years. “You can’t be on estrogen!” she blurted. “It’s increasing your risk of stroke!” I felt my heart sink. No doctor had ever told me that you couldn’t be on estrogen with my specific neurological condition—that the extra dose of hormones substantially increased my risk of stroke. I was torn—the estrogen in the pill had finally solved my acne, but I certainly didn’t want to wake up with a stroke one day, especially not while I was still so young. Trading one hormone for another The following month, back at the OB-GYN’s office, I swapped my estrogen birth control pill for a progesterone-only IUD. Immediately, I suffered three migraines back to back within the span of two months. When I called the neurologist and the OB-GYN to ask whether the IUD had anything to do with the increasing frequency of my migraine attacks, they only shrugged and said to give it a few more months—my hormones would stabilize, and my migraines would likely go back to normal. That was when it hit me that my migraines were probably hormonal. Over the next few years, while I was still on birth control with my IUD, my migraines improved as promised—likely from the lack of extra estrogen in my body, which seemed to have been worsening my original attacks—but I felt constantly dizzy and anxious. Nevertheless, it seemed that I had no other choice. Thinking back to the words of my neurologist, I gradually learned to live with my migraine episodes. I started my own company to give myself flexible hours in case one of my nasty headaches ever interfered with my work schedule, and I learned to properly hydrate to mitigate the possibility of an attack. Still, it would have been better not to have to deal with migraines at all. It wasn’t until I was 27 years old—around the time that my IUD was set to expire—that I went off birth control entirely. The appointment that changed my mind At that point, I had been on birth control for the past 12 years of my life. That same year, new research had begun to link hormonal contraception to various forms of cancer, placing birth control in the same cancer risk category as smoking cigarettes. It's reasonable to assume that 12 years ago, we wouldn't have had substantial evidence to conclude that birth control increased cancer risk, but by the time I made it back to my OB-GYN’s office to have my IUD taken out, there was certainly enough information available to make it not only advisable but obligatory for physicians to disclose those risks to patients. There was none of that, of course, in my next and last visit to my OB-GYN—the afternoon that would change my view on birth control forever. Coming into the office with the request to have my IUD removed, I was instructed no fewer than six times to consider an alternative form of birth control. When I pushed back, insisting that I no longer wanted to put synthetic hormones into my body, I was met with a glower. “We have some new IUDs that last seven years now,” the doctor explained. “Are you sure you don’t want to just get a new one?” “No,” I insisted. “I want to go off birth control completely." “But what if you accidentally get pregnant?” the doctor exclaimed. I showed her the ring on my finger from my recent engagement. “All right,” I said with a laugh. “Then I’ll have a baby.” She looked at me as if I were speaking a foreign language. Birth control had assumed godlike immunity in the minds of these physicians. I’ll remind you that I was no longer 17 but now 27 years old . The suggestion that I put a device into my body that would make me infertile until I was 34 was not only comical but downright alarming. It was as if these doctors didn’t realize that having a baby was perfectly all right, and even a blessing! When I brought up the potential cancer risk, the doctor brushed me off. “It might negligibly increase risk for some types of cancer,” she went on, “but we know for certain that it decreases risks for others, making birth control a net positive.” Birth control had assumed godlike immunity in the minds of these physicians, and they genuinely believed that going on the pill was one of the best things a woman could do. After a good 40 minutes of back-and-forth, they finally let me go without replacing my birth control method . I suffered another migraine the following morning—likely due to hormone fluctuations—and have since lived the past two years of my life migraine-free. I don’t know if my migraines are gone forever, but they have certainly become less frequent since I went off the synthetic hormones. I am no physician, and I have no tangible evidence that my dreaded migraines were even tied to the birth control pill in the first place, but I only know that since going off the pill, my dizziness improved, my migraines subsided, and my overall well-being has been better than ever. Sure, it’s annoying to have to suffer an occasional spell of acne and to have to deal with a period after I got used to living without one, a common side effect of birth control, but there is absolutely nothing that would compel me to go back on hormonal birth control after 12 years of gambling with my health. When birth control becomes an ideology While I have a rare medical condition that, thankfully, doesn’t affect the general female population, I am not the only person to have suffered under the reign of the birth control craze. Today, the medical industry reveres birth control because it represents a certain “feminist” vision of society where women delay having children until 34 and where girls are warned as early as middle school that having a child can “ruin your life.” I do not mean to endorse teen pregnancy by any means, but such repeated messaging to young girls convinces them as they get older that having a kid will necessarily get in the way of their career and will “ruin” their lives. The result is an entire generation of left-leaning young women who expect to live child-free lives, believing that the absence of children will make their lives more free and fulfilling. Such societal messaging has had a detrimental effect on the medical community, which now turns to birth control as the most effective method of proliferating an anti-natal worldview. As a result, birth control has also become a catch-all solution. Today, girls as young as 12 or 13 are routinely prescribed the pill not only for pregnancy prevention but also for acne, irregular periods, painful menstruation, and a host of other conditions. Meanwhile, these young women are often inadequately informed about the potential risks and long-term trade-offs associated with altering their hormonal systems during adolescence. We have become bizarrely obsessed with the idea that having kids is a net negative, and it is no surprise that our medical institutions reflect the same worldview. I do not believe that we should ban birth control entirely, and I acknowledge that birth control can be an effective means of treating conditions such as acne and irregular periods and, of course, that it can be a convenient way to enjoy modern life without the constant anxiety over an unwanted pregnancy. But it is undeniable that the degree to which hormonal contraception is promoted in our society—often without an adequate conversation about its many risks—points to a larger problem in our culture. Simply put, we have become bizarrely obsessed with the idea that having kids is a net negative, and it is no surprise that our medical institutions reflect the same worldview. Every woman deserves to know both the benefits and the risks of hormonal contraception , and every woman deserves to make that decision free from ideological pressure. I am only a single data point among a sea of millions of women across the country, but birth control once ruined my life in ways that could have been completely avoidable had I been properly informed of its risks back when I was a kid. Today, when an increasing number of young women have become convinced that the pill is the be-all and end-all of contemporary feminism, we have a duty to spread awareness about the pill’s potential risks to provide a better future for countless women who are unknowingly suffering from birth control's many side effects. I wish it hadn’t taken me 12 years, countless migraines, and a frightening brush with my own mortality to see the light about the pill, and to realize that I always had another choice. But all that’s water under the bridge. I’ve been living my life free of a chronic illness that I was once told was incurable, I have more energy today to participate in the activities I love, and most importantly, I’m getting married this coming spring, and can’t wait to start welcoming my future babies.