hey Mir-ma-dear,
just do it. here's why - every medication has a list a mile long of potential side effects and they all sound horribly scary. Ibuprofen is supposed to make your stomach bleed or something, and isn't Advil one of everyone's favourites? I mean, I went to the "chemist" here in the UK and tried to buy Ibuprofen and it was behind the counter and they gave me a little mini-lecture on its proper use. Ibuprofen!!

I have way more to say on this and am sending you an email about it - all I need to say in your comments, for sake of brevity, is that I think you should go for it.

xo

We can go on an on about the excitement of the monthly roller-coaster, about the feeling of being a "true woman" and of sharing the responsibility for contraception with the penis-bearers in our beds, but in history, and in practice, sometimes those little pills do more good than harm. Sexual revolution, anyone?

I took them for two years. I had gorgeous boobs, clear skin, and periods that lasted 24 hours. I never did suffer deep vein thrombosis, and always wondered if it would be worse than 48 hours of cramps.

As is obvious, I stopped taking the pill eventually. At a certain time in my life the balance between risks and benefits shifted again. But I'm glad I tried. So I will second MK and say: nothing ventured, nothing gained.

well.. mk has the benfit of distance. If my boobs turn into freakish cantaloupes and I get crying jags every ten minutes and can't leave the house because none of my bras fit anymore guess who's getting an earful..

kidding (only not) I guess I will try it for a while and see what happens.

Thank god I am not such a shallow asshole that I write all this crap on my blog eh?

good thing I know what really matters in life.

I read a relly interesting article on this subject the other day. I didn't know that when taking the pill you are not really having an actual period. It is just some type of artificial bleeding but not an actual menstrual cycle. They just put the bleeding part in in an attempt that Catholics would see the pill as still 'natural' and accept it. However, it wasn't successful in terms of convincing the Catholics.

I can relate that it is easier to find a solution then do the hard work i.e. self-acceptance around looks. I also often want a quick solution. However, quick solutions can also bring more problems.

I think there is probably a safer solution then taking the pill.

I thought the first two posts were so tilted pro-pill the other side was needed.

Ruth

Heya,

Yeah.. I agree with you the self-acceptance part is way harder than taking a little tablet every morning.

I also agree that the pill is like frankenstein science.

Which leaves me in a bit of a quandary.

Evan and I are having this debate now, while I am writing about the pill too. The whole family is getting involved.

The actual truth is this: I think I just feel like I am getting old, which is scarier than any zit action could ever be. Fear of aging at 28 sounds ridiculous but here's the justification.

I think I will be less afraid of aging once i have actually done some of it. Now all I know is that in a year I am going to be thirty and that any 5 year plan I make should include a baby. These are not small decisions anymore. They are big scary decisions that require a lot more foresight and self-confidence than I usually have at my disposal at any given time.

I guess I feel like I'm having a Peter Pan syndrome kind of year. I wanted to stop at my mid-twenties, I felt like the person I expressed externally fully exemplified who I believed I was internally. Now the things I want to achieve externally are demanding a lot of shifts to the kind of person I can believe myself to be internally. The disconnect between what I hope my life will become in the next 5 years, and what I feel I have the internal capacity to achieve sometimes gets reallys stressful.

So instead of thinking about that. I am thinking about back-zits. It's like ignoring the forest for the trees.

But thank you all for listening and helping me out. It's great that even if I sound like a vain silly goof you are all willing to take time out and offer your opinions.

Re: the pill. I don't know yet. But whatever I decide to do I hope that I can begin to pull the fabric of the imagined me and the real me closer together so I don't have to keep freaking out about the small stuff anymore.

Yeah, Ruth, you are right. Technically it is called "breakthrough bleeding" and there is a lot of controversy about whether you even need to stop taking the pill at all (so much that it is possible to not have a period at all).

I never thought I would ever be accused of being "pro-pill." I have had a long struggle with whether or not to use this type of medicine, and I think most of the time I come off as anti-pill. For example, as I have a family history of breast cancer, I am pretty worried about the increased risks of taking up more estrogen . . .and this is why I don't take the pill any more.

I think I am more "pro-experimentation" than "pro-pill" -- in our world already full of risks and full of potentials for altering our bodies, minds and spirits, sometimes we get the chance to make the choice, and sometimes, in the case of drinking water full of antibiotics and breathing air full of hydocarbons, we do not.

In this case, lovely Mir, you get a chance to see what this might do. And the chance to stop if that's not what you want.

i say yes...

but a warning: my boobs never went back to normal...they got bigger and stayed bigger.

hey all.. I just had this conversation on Beth's back patio with beth and netami. Netami made a nice point.

She said basically the medical industry is saying you have one small problem, and the only way we know how to deal with that problem is to fuck with your bodies essential chemistry.

That's not a problem of me being shallow that's a problem of the medical industry not having any way to deal with womens bodies other then to regulate the shit out of them.

Then Beth said she felt weird for the entire two years she was on the pill but didn't realize until she was off the pill. That the pill equalizes many of the brighter facets of ones personality, turning a stained glass window into plain.

That's a little more scary than bigger boobs (although that's mighty scary too andria).

I don't want a pill that will clear my skin at the same time as it turns me into a sepford wife.

The other thing I find weird is some people say; "Why is this even an issue at all? Everyone takes the pill."

If it really is going to have that big an effect on my personality does that mean a whole bunch of women out there are going through life with mild personality alterations?

Which makes me paranoid that the pill is actually an on-the ground strategy for making women behave acceptably? The same way that women were called hysterical when they showed anger back in the day. Now, instead of getting to feel a little swoopy every month, (and perhaps that is part of my who I am, and what empowers me to know stuff in a rich and varied way), I take the pill and get restricted access to a plateau of acceptable feelings and by extension behaviors. All thanks to modern medicine.

eeek.

I know and here I am bitching hwen I generaly hate the fatc that once a month I cry for no reasona t all.. Now I think that's part of my general right to exists. maybe it's liek I can tease my little brother but if someone else tries than I get pissed.

I can hate my pms but if someone else tries, watch out now..

Thanks for bringing it up. I've been on the pill for about 12 years. I actually haven't been off it at all in that whole time apart from one month of puking-disease so I wouldn't be able to tell you if my personality is affected at all. But now I'm wondering.

My reason for being on and staying on is that whatever undesirable side effects (boob, skin, personality, cancer) might happen, they were much less scary than getting pregnant. Getting pregnant comes with terrifying health side effects (my main argument for providing free birth control to anyone who requests it) and you've got a baby to deal with, too. But now I'm almost 32, a baby wouldn't be the end of the world either. I'm going to have to rethink this a bit.

Thanks mir!

Okay. I no longer bleed for 3 weeks out of the month, my boobs are actually smaller than they ever were before, and I feel decidedly un-crazy. Patriarchy be damned, I love the pill. Menstrual cramps that make you throw up from the pain are a terrible side effect of being a girl, wouldn't you say? Anything that alleviates that is a-okay by me. Besides, try it before you judge. The new ones are so low-level they are practically ibuprofen. That's my two cents.

-L.

Hi Miriam,

Ned pointed me to this blog post because he thought I would find it really interesting, and he is right. I am very interested in issues about contraception and birth control, especially now when Bush and Harper seem likely to attack women’s choices in these domains, so I thought I would add my two cents.

The reason that there are so many warnings listed is because of liability. Basically, the law is written so that companies are off the hook legally as long as they have provided complete and accurate information to the “patient” who then is supposed to weigh the risks and benefits (though benefits are not usually outlined as carefully, see below) and decide for themselves whether to take the drug. If society were less litigious there would be fewer side-effects listed, but as it is drug companies basically list everything that has any statistical risk whatever (all they leave off is “theoretical risk” things that could conceivably happen, but never have happened to anyone at all). Another way to think of the risks, then, is that this is all that has happened to someone taking the pill that could even potentially be correlated with the act of taking the pill.

Now put that into perspective: the pill began being researched in 1957, was approved by the FDA in 1960 and by 1963 1.2 million women were using it. That number has only continued to grow. This means that as far as pharmaceuticals go, we have better evidence about the risks, benefits and safety of the Pill, than we do for almost any other drug. And still there are not all that many (compared to say Paxil, Prozac and that group which has been studied a lot less). When I have gone to health conferences, the rule of thumb among health care professionals tends to be that they would not take a new drug unless it has been around past the patent expiry. The reason for this is Parma companies often “fudge” the data to make the product look really good while they hold the patent. This allows them to make maximum profits. Once the patent expires, then it is much less profitable to make a poor product appear effective, and the down-side comes out. Since the pill has been around so long, you can pretty much be sure that the data on the pack is accurate, which is a good thing. Also, as far as long-term worries go, we are getting pretty close to having full information about that. Many women who began taking the pill early in their reproductive lives have now entered menopause, so we have a pretty good idea about how the pill affects fertility, fertility cycles and so on. Some women who started taking the pill late in their lives (i.e. at 35) have now died of natural causes, and so we know something about long term effects after the fertile time of a woman’s life as well.

Thus, what is listed on the pack is pretty much as bad as it gets. Also it is important to remember that these side-effects are for any patient, and some will have different risk-profiles than you (e.g. many of them are mostly found in smokers—deep vein thrombosis, aka blood clots—so if you are still not smoking, then it may not be much of a risk for you). You should think about your own risk-profile and use that to decide whether these are likely to pertain to you. Also don’t ignore the warning signs (e.g. pain or weakness in the limbs, headaches etc.) and report these to your GP and you should probably be fine.

Furthermore, there are certain benefits to the pill that do not get published on the patient information because they have no impact on protecting companies from law suits (it is assumed that the only benefits patients care about are the effectiveness issues). First, the pill does prevent ovulation (you are not an ovum factory, but rather on break from producing ova) and this has been shown to lead to lower incidences of ovarian cancer in women who use the pill for long uninterrupted periods of time. There is also some correlation between taking the pill and lower chance of polycystic ovarian syndrome (I think it is also linked to lower chance of uterine cancer, but I am not sure about that). I am not really sure why people have written that the Pill makes you have a “fake” period. It is only fake in the sense that you are not producing an egg. It is, however, real in the sense that you actually are shedding your uterine lining. So the blood is the same as it ever was, all that is missing is the egg.

Now, as for the effect on mood and personality: hormones affect your mood and personality, but they do not determine it, e.g. I have sometimes had bad PMS and been really annoyed with people/life, but other times I hardly notice at all. Hormones exaggerate what is going on in my life—they are an influence—but what is actually going on in my life has far more of a determining influence. In my opinion, putting women’s complaints down to their hormonal fluctuations is actually more sexist than trying to regulate fertility because it is just a convenient way to dismiss women’s concerns. Believe me, I would not be pissed off if there was nothing to be pissed off about, though my hormones do make me more likely to express it—and sometimes after I feel like I “over” reacted, but never that I reacted to nothing at all and it was “just” hormones… maybe your experience is different, I don’t know. I also think that women have learned to dismiss their own complaints by reducing them to hormones, “oh, honey I’m not really mad at the fact that you never clean anything in the house and act like I am your slave. That is actually just fine by me because I love you. It must have just been PMS.” As if that is not a legitimate complaint! Women are taught to be good and sweet all of the time. Sometimes hormones allow us to let out those things we otherwise hold inside. I think that is great! If only women could stop dismissing it afterwards when the hormones have settled, then we might get somewhere. And men’s hormones cycle too. But their cycle is shorter, usually the cycle occurs in a single day, or over two days as he ages. So he gets to let things out because of his hormones, but then does not have to apologize afterwards. Seems to me like men are getting a better deal on this one.

Your body usually adjusts to the new hormone levels, in much the same way that you are now probably adjusted to your hormones more than you were as a teenager. For many women, there is a period of adjustment (usually two months) and then they get used to the pill levels and no longer notice their effects. If you DO experience mood alterations for more than two months, you should see your doctor and ask for a different prescription (they each have slightly different hormone combos). The pill was designed by looking at the way women’s hormones work when not altered (well, both when pregnant and when not pregnant, by “unaltered” I mean without the addition of artificial hormones) and it is made to mimic the natural patterns of the pregnant female. It should NOT make you feel different (if it does, it probably means the particular pill that you are on does not match your normal hormonal patterns—again, you can either try another one, or give up). If you are worried about breast cancer, you can take pills without estrogen; they have now developed very effective progestin-only pills for women with a family history of breast cancer (or other reason to avoid estrogen).

As for the political issues, you are right, it is entirely unfair that women have to bear all the responsibility for birth control (did you know that they were working on a male pill, which worked and had similar side effects to the female pill, but they decided not to market it because it lowered libido—which the female pill may do as well—and they thought this would eliminate any interest on the part of men, kinda shallow). But it is also important to remember that the ability to control one’s fertility is vital to the feminist movement. It may be true that hormonal methods are not ideal, but we do not live in an ideal world, and they are much better than anything else (including condoms in my opinion, because the Pill is more reliable).

Furthermore, I don’t really see why taking the pill negates male responsibility for fertility and/or sex. First, if there is a baby, then “I thought she was on the pill” in no way decreases paternal responsibilities or child support, if it comes to that. Second, just because you are taking it, does not mean that you cannot share responsibility with your partner. For example, my partner is responsible for picking the pills up from the pharmacy when we run out, whereas I am responsible for taking them daily. But if that doesn’t seem like enough to you, why don’t you make it his responsibility to bring them to you (assuming you live together) or remind you every day (by phone if you do not live together). This does not seem unreasonable, since you are taking the risk and he is getting (at least some of) the benefits, so why not just assign the responsibility to him?

As for altering the body’s chemistry, we do that all of the time. What we eat is largely influenced by science and advertising and our diet has an equal (if not greater) impact on our body chemistries. Hair dye, skin cream, shampoo, soaps etc, etc. all alter our body chemistries, and some quite severely (e.g. some hair dies are linked to cancer). Since there are so many ways we alter our body chemistries, it seems odd to me to single the pill out as a “bad” form of alteration, especially when the ability to control her own fertility is so very important to female emancipation. I suppose a second comment on making women “responsible” for birth control is that, really, who would you want to have responsible for this? Your partner? The State? This has been the case for women for a long time in the past. Their husbands decided when and if they would have children and the women had little choice about it. In some countries (e.g. modern China with one-child policy, breeding programs in 1920s that were common in the USA, Canada and Europe) the stated decided who was fit to parent, and who became sterile. I think that with Bush and Harper in power, women’s right to control their fertility (i.e. be responsible for it) is now under attack. We should probably do our best to hang on to what we have and not let it slip away under religious attack.

The other issue that has been raised in these comments concern what is “natural” and this is a tricky issue. What exactly is the “natural state” of female hormones? Do we even know? Many have said that the pill makes you fall into “unnatural” patterns, but in the past many women spent most of their lives pregnant, and that is the state that the pill mimics through altered hormone levels (the patterns of hormones in the pill keeps progestin elevated for longer so that you do not ovulate, and this pattern is similar to the one that is experienced in pregnancy, except that with the pill eventually there is a break so that you shed your endometrium). So in one sense, the pill could be seen as restoring the now altered female body to its “natural” hormonal pattern. Equally, it could be seen as introducing foreign hormones into the body creating an unnatural state. Choose the interpretation that suits you best.

One thing that is a big concern about the pill is its environmental effects. The levels of estrogens that have been found in the water table are much elevated since women began taking the pill. This is partly because some of the estrogen is not processed, and leaves the body in urine. This can’t really be helped (except by taking progestin only pills), but another source of estrogen in the water is from improper disposal, if you throw out pills they “melt” into the soil and eventually into the water table. It is important to bring any unused pills to the pharmacist for proper disposal rather than flushing them down the toilet or throwing them in the garbage. Estrogen in the water has so far been linked to some problems in fish and other aquatic animals.

Anyhow, I could write more on this, since contraception and birth control is one area of medicine that I find fascinating, but I think I may have said too much already. I am not, by the way, a pill-supporter. But I am also not a pill-detractor. It is far from a perfect solution, but it has really done a lot to contribute to women’s emancipation. If fertility were uncontrollable then there really would be reason to restrict sexually active heterosexual women from certain jobs that harm the fetus. Without the pill women would continue to be seen as “unserious” employees who may leave work at any time to have a baby (this view still continues, but it would be far worse without contraception). I am not trying to say the pill is all great, you could be one of the women for whom it does not work or who feels different from normal when on it. But why not try and see? If you are really worried about the pill, there are other acne treatments. Acutane works really well, but it is far more dangerous and less well-studied than the pill. Also, tetracycline (an antibiotic) helps to clear up acne, but it may contribute to the development of drug-resistant viruses if you happen to have a virus that has not been diagnosed.

Anyhow, you should decide to do what feels right for you. And as someone has already said, you can experiment by trying, and then stopping if it does not work out.

Sorry for the long post.

no, thanks for the long post.

I just woke up so I am gonna have to let that settle in.

I think all the points raised within are excellent, and like everything else in this thread it's some serious food for thought.

I think you should start a blog about feminist responses/ideas about the medical industry. It would be awesome because a) you are a genius and b) you write very well.

lemme know, I can set that up for you.

I decided against the pill though the doctors handed me enough samples. I felt awful on it when I tried it at 16, and within less than a week, I went off it. That was my only experience, and since then, the risks haven't been worth it to me at all.

I treat cramps with a prescription drug called Ansaid. I started using it at 16. Since I started working out during my period more heavily, I need less of the drug for pain.

My skin was driving me nuts once I started a treatment for another medical problem that involved some androgens. Hello zits! I use clindamyacin gel on my face in combo with Retin A/Renova. I had to experiment because too much means a peeling, red face, but just enough gets many compliments. I also use a clindamyacin/alcohol solution in an applicator to mop any oil in areas that are breaking out. My skin is quite clear now.

Good luck with it!

Hi, again. Thanks for the comments, but really I am not a genius, that is just Ned-hype (he does exaggerate about things he likes). Sorry for posting again, but I could not resist adding a little more. One thing that I do think is a really big problem is that women are not taken very seriously, and information about the pill is withheld from women because medical practitioners don’t think “women will be able to understand the complicated information” (that is a direct quote from the Lancet a British medical journal; 2005 vol. 365 pgs. 1670-71). Recently the World Health Organization (WHO) released a booklet titled: Selected practice recommendations for contraceptive use, 2nd edn. (available for download at http://www.who.int/reproductive-health/publications/spr/ but it is long at 170 pages) that has very detailed information about how to deal with missing the pill. The information in it is very detailed. They talk about how many pills were missed in a row, what point in the cycle the pills were missed at etc. and then give recommendations as to what women should do about it (and often, it does not require using condoms until the next pack). Then a family planning group in the UK released a simplified guideline for missed pills (Faculty of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care. “Missed pills: new recommendations.” Journal of Family Planning & Reproductive HealthCare 2005; 31: 153-55.) that outlines the basics of what to do. The quote above comes from some physicians who object to these guidelines because they are too complicated for women to be able to follow. These physicians (a woman and a man) objected to releasing the info because they thought it might lead to higher rates of accidental pregnancy (read teenage pregnancy, because no one is worried about married women accidentally becoming pregnant). When the faculty of family planning authors responded (and they were all women) they note that many women at least know the name of the pill they are on, so could probably use the information well. But they go on to say that the information is aimed at health care professionals who can then interpret the information for women.

So both groups leave in place the stereotype that women may be too “stupid” to use the pill properly (who do you think these authors believe should be responsible for women’s fertility? That’s right, MDs. This is, in my opinion, a much larger danger than making women responsible). But the main issue is that the information released to ALL women is set by the lowest level of comprehension (that of an uneducated teenager). For other groups this is not the case. When the drug is to treat a male condition (e.g. Viagra) they do include rather complicated information on use. So all men are considered able to interpret information that is aimed at University educated men, whereas all women are assumed to only be able to interpret information at a high school level. Not so great in terms of women’s equality.

If you are worried about the Pill, you should read the WHO statements. There is also a link to updates on that page which include information on the Pill and bone health (estrogen increases the chances of osteoporosis, so if there is a family history you should use progestin-only pills). The best thing to do is to read information that was NOT written for patients, but was instead written for health care providers. That information is not dumbed-down so it is likely to be more accurate than anything else you will read. Including the info on the back of the pack.

I want to apologize for my last post, because I think it sounds a bit like I am dismissing women’s reported experiences with the pill. I don’t mean to. I in no way doubt that Beth felt different the whole time she was on the pill. She probably did. I know several other women who had bad reactions to the pill and so stopped taking it. All I mean to say is that her experience will not necessarily be your experience, so you can still try if you want. And stop if it doesn’t work for you, or switch brands.

Also on a completely different note, did you know that they have developed a vaccine for HPV (genital warts, and probably the main or only cause of cervical cancer). Medical practitioners have recommended that this become a standard part of all childhood vaccinations in order to prevent female deaths from this form of cancer. Bush, and his far-right religious supporters have opposed this decision because they think that providing these vaccines might counter the “abstinence only” message of the church. So they would rather have women die from cancer (whether this was due to their own “irresponsible” sex, rape, incest or what have you) than vaccinate women and men against genital warts, because this might make people less afraid of premarital sex.

And as for the blog, I have never before last post had any blog interaction, but it does seem interesting. Ned suggested the google blogger site. What would you recommend?

Thanks for listening to me. I hope you work this out, Miriam.

At this point I feel like I could have certain sort of expertise in the area thanks to all my awesome commenters.

Jen, I am just trying out this new compnay that makes all natural products and it's treating my nasty comedones really well, but new ones keep a comin' up to paraphrase Diane Ross.

SO I think my new plan of action is to go on the pill for a while and keep using this all natural no-irritating super expensive cleanser and we're partying.

Mer,

Hugh at dose uses called blogsome, instead of the google blog deal.

http://blogsome.com/

it's based on an application that I think offers a few more perks, people can get a feed of your blog and you can post pictures more easily etc..

Basically a blog is a blog is a blog I think the important thing is to find an interface you find simple to use, and then to start connecting with your readers.

Just don't use msn blogs that's cheap.

I could also email you about all this off topic business.

i say do it.

I need someone like you, to interpret the business of the WHO to me, because I run out of patience reading asperin containers.

next up. what are the odds I will pass my driving test tomorrow?

Hi Miriam,

yes, please do send me a personal email about blogging. I have read through some of your posts and they seem very interesting. Maybe I could make an interesting blog too? I don't know. Thanks for the help!

GOOD LUCK with the driving test. I am sure you will do very well.