Stopping The Contraceptive Pill After Almost 4 Years [My Uncensored Story]

I often see people asking online about how to begin the process of stopping the contraceptive pill and generally experiencing a lot of worry about the topic. There are also a number of articles which try to describe the things that might happen.

There are lots of reasons why someone might want to stop taking hormonal birth control but in this post, I’m going to address my own reasons and experience. I hope that by sharing this, it gives a fresh perspective on things as opposed to the large volume of horror stories found on the internet. This post is definitely not intended to encourage anyone to quit the pill or make any changes to medications – this is a very personal decision that should be based on your own research and medical circumstances rather than things read on the internet.

Before Stopping The Contraceptive Pill

Prior to quitting, I had used the combined pill for 3.5 years then switched to the mini pill for the final few months due to medical reasons. To put it bluntly, the mini pill was not suiting me at all, hence why I chose to stop using it all together as opposed to sticking it out or finding something else. I was experiencing near-constant headaches, random spotting and cramping (but no actual period), I felt tired and I was emotionally down all of the time. Generally, I began to feel like I wasn’t myself. The combined pill never caused these issues but, after quitting, I learned that it had definitely impacted my personality while I was using it without me even noticing.

While considering quitting, I had heard so many negative stories online. Stories of people who gained vast amounts of weight, others said their skin began to break out worse than ever before. Some even said that they never regained their natural cycle years after quitting and were forced to undergo invasive testing/treatments when they eventually wanted children. If I’m completely honest, the whole thing terrified me. It was one huge leap into the unknown. Even though I’d only used hormonal birth control for a relatively short amount of time compared to others, I felt afraid of what ‘natural’ state I’d return to. Regardless of my fears, however, my desire to quit outweighed the potential issues I heard I might encounter.

Physical Effects of Quitting

As expected, after stopping the mini pill, I experienced a withdrawal bleed (a bleed induced by stopping using the pill or other hormonal birth control – nothing to do with your natural cycle). This continued on for a lot longer than expected, only stopping after I had confirmed ovulation (via the fertility awareness method). The experience was genuinely cathartic given that I hadn’t had a period in months since using the mini pill.

A huge positive was that my major negative symptoms of using the pill stopped within days, such as the headaches and cramping. I did experience one bad episode of migraine with aura however – this is something I have only experienced one other time in my life. After the initial few days though, my tendency for headaches or menstrual cramps returned to a ‘normal’ level which had always been manageable for me.

With regards to other things people tend to mention, I have nothing to report. My weight remained the same, my appetite did not change and my skin was the same as it always had been. Given that these were the things I was most scared about dealing with, I felt like I could breathe a sigh of relief as the weeks went by with no major problems.

Emotional Effects of Quitting

It was about a week after I took my final pill that I really realised what had been happening with my personality and emotions over the last few years. I vividly remember going swimming and realising how colourful everything was. I stood marvelling at the beauty of the light travelling through the pool water. Sounds seemed clearer as I listened to the birds chirping beyond the windows.

It was at that moment that I realised I really wanted to be creative again. I used to write all the time but quickly noticed that I hadn’t really written or created anything worth mentioning during the time I had been on the pill. It was like a whole part of me had been missing for a long time.

Besides this, my partner, Mike, commented on how much happier and ‘less moody’ I was after I had stopped taking the pill. I hadn’t noticed that I was acting any differently but obviously those close to me had.

Where I Am Now

It’s been several years since I stopped taking the pill. In that time I have qualified as a Natural Family Planning instructor, tried out a number of different types of femtech aimed at tracking the cycle and never looked back. Personally, I don’t feel like I’ll ever go back to hormonal birth control and I’m glad I came off it before too many years had passed.