Birth Control and Depression: What You Might Not Know

I just quit using my birth control, and I've never felt better.

Does this sound like you (you know, assuming you're female and all)? I'm sure it sounds like a lot of women. Hormonal birth control comes with a laundry list of possible side effects: weight gain, vaginal dryness, loss of sex drive, skin problems, way increased risk of blood clots...the list goes on.

The problem you don't hear about often enough is depression.

It doesn't happen to every woman who uses the stuff, certainly. But considering how many anecdotal reports I've found about this problem (since experiencing it for myself) I'm really a bit alarmed about how little it gets talked about and how few women are being warned that they may experience these types of problems. I've even heard tales of women who suspect that their birth control was causing depression and anxiety, only to be shot down by doctors who tell them that their emotional problems are of their own making.

A little warning would have made a lot of difference for me, I can tell you that. The emotional problems I experienced came about so gradually, started so subtly and were so different from any depressive bouts I'd ever experienced, that it didn't occur to me to connect them with my birth control until I'd been using it for almost a year.

I had almost all of the other side effects right away - dryness, weight gain, lack of sex drive. I was willing to deal with these for the sake of sex without condoms, but when I realized that my birth control was not just ruining my sex life, but my actual life as well, I decided it was by no means worth it.

I had become a wreck. I was constantly anxious and cried daily. I lost patience and screamed at people, or situations, at the slightest provocation. When, eventually, my mom suggested to me that perhaps the artificial hormones coursing through my system had something to do with my generally horrible mood and terrible outlook on life. I was certain she had to be wrong - it was my life that was causing me to feel this way, surely, not my birth control.

That's the thing about hormonal depression, though. Bad feelings don't spring out of nowhere, they rise and fall in accordance with environmental factors. For me, this made the problem even harder to spot.

Eventually, Mom convinced me, and every day since I stopped using my BC has been a happier one as my system recovers. So please, ladies, if your life just hasn't been working for you and you're on the pill, the patch, or the ring, consider giving it up.