I stopped taking the contraceptive pill one week ago after taking it for over 10 years! As deciding to do this was a big step for me and it scared me a lot (and still does) because of all the possible negative side effects that can come with it. I’m really grateful for other women out there sharing their experiences. I wouldn’t even have thought about doing it in the first place if it wasn’t for other women inspiring me! This is why I want to do the same. I want to encourage women to stop taking the pill and to contribute to clarifying how dangerous this drug really is.

First of all: Why did I stop taking it? Simple: It’s just really unhealthy to fill up your body with hormones all the time and to make your body feel like it’s pregnant. It can have so many negative side effects. When I started taking it as a teenager (I think it’s almost a crime that doctor’s just prescribe this dangerous pill to young women so recklessly!), I thought I experienced no side effects as there were no obvious ones like weight gain for me. I thought all those things like being moody, feeling down, tired etc. were a normal development due to puberty and getting older. Also later I thought it’s just normal as a woman to have a low libido. (Yes, I also want to talk about topics like this, it’s just so important for your whole wellbeing and we should not feel ashamed to talk about it. We’re all old enough, right? 😉 )

So why did I stop thinking that these things are the „normal“ condition of my body and might actually be side effects of the pill? Because so many women talked about how much they changed when getting off the pill.

After one week I also want to tell you now what has changed for me so far. Actually I thought after a short time like this there will be no changes but honestly, I can already feel changes after 7 days of being hormone-free:

I feel so much more awake. I had such a busy week and not a lot of sleep. I didn’t even work out as I’m not allowed to at the moment and I still feel really fit. I also feel so much more relaxed and positive in general. My car broke down this week and fixing it was really expensive and everything just was so stressful and annoying, I always arrived home late and still my mood was pretty good despite all this trouble which is not usual for me. Even my parents told me how surprised they were to hear me talking so calm about all this on the phone. Even wrote an article about how to deal better with days like this and when I wrote it I thought it was just because of me working on myself but I realised that getting off the pill some days before really helped a lot. And thinking back now I also realise that maybe I always had depressive phases in the past because of the pill and not due to puberty. Because until 15-16 when I started taking it, I was never as sad and negative as I was later on. The best thing so far is: Even after just one week i can feel how my libido is increasing. This makes me really happy. Plus I feel it’s not just this. My emotions and senses in general seem to get stronger again. Many women talk about how they feel that they’ve been under a cover while being on the pill and I feel it might be the same for me. Even with going vegan my mind started to clear up and now it seems it’s starting to get even clearer.

So far after one week I didn’t experience any negative effects like getting lots of pimples (or even acne), losing hair, gaining weight etc. I know they can still show up after weeks though.

I really hope this article helps you with your decision to get off the pill or makes you even think about it in the first place. I’m thinking about making another article after some time to talk about what else has changed if there are going to be any more changes (which I think will be the case..).