I was at a pretty formative stage in my life when I made this doctor’s appointment. I was studying for my A-levels at the time. Shortly after, I moved out of my hometown to go to university, where I balanced an entirely new social life and sex life with my studies. It was during this time that a few things changed physically: I began dealing with anxiety on a regular basis, I developed IBS, I put on some weight and my skin completely cleared up. There’s no way to tell if these things happened because I went on the contraceptive pill or simply because I was a teenage girl coming out the other side of puberty. But in the six years since then I have spent a lot of time wondering what I’d be like as a person had I not spent my late teenage years and early 20s taking hormonal contraception. And so, after being advised by my GP to switch to the progesterone-only pill due to concerns about migraines I’ve been having, I decided now was as good a time as any to take a break from it completely.
