My Not-So Wonderful Adventures with Depo

Gather around fellow vagina operators, and let me share with you the absolutely mental story I have about this fucking needle.

If anyone knows me personally, they will be aware as to what a nightmare this form of contraception has been. I was on and off the Depo shot for around 8 years or so and used to sing its praises about it stopping my periods and no longer having to worry about getting pregnant. Because when you're young and selfish, that's realistically all you care about. Periods are expensive and inconvenient at best. Babies even more so.

No one else seemed to have the luck I had once had with this shot, everyone else had mood swings and months of spotting and bleeding whereas I was in the clear for all of that. However it took my relationship and personal life nearly going nuclear to realise that there was something not quite right.

The shot had a very slow and strange way of changing who I was without me really noticing. I had gradually become horribly depressed, thoughts of suicide plagued me every day and made me feel terrified because there was no real reason for me to feel this way. I'd brushed a lot of it off as stress about money and moving house a lot, which helped me shift the blame elsewhere. However I felt like I was never really me, and I hated how I acted in a lot of situations.

Overall I was actually a very nasty person, and I felt nasty about myself.

This was pretty much my life before I had my ass jabbed every 3 months

I'm a firm believer that the drugs don't work, at least not for everyone. I was put on anti-depressants that made me feel even worse and when I returned to my GP they just prescribed more. Obviously I did not pick those tablets up. Looking back now I do often wonder why no one ever questions a woman whether they are on a contraceptive pill or injection as a lot of these have very similar side effects, one of them being depression or low mood. Maybe I just had a crappy doctor who just didn't listen? We'll never know.

Fast forward a few years and my partner and I have finally settled into life in the midlands, we both have steady jobs, a cute little house and my old cat. All we needed was the white picket fence. The newest and probably most annoying side effect of the injection hit me in full force, making me basically dead below the waist. TMI for my usual readers but if you're here then you're here for all the gory details.

This had been an on and off issue for a number of years, but society pretty much tells women that we aren't supposed to enjoy sex and that if we do we are sluts and deviants.

I had 100% lost my sex drive to the point where I thought I was perhaps Asexual or had a form of Vaginismus. I know when I first saw that word I though that it sounded very insidious but it's actually very common, and is basically the uncontrollable contraction of the vagina making sex pretty much a big no unless you're into pain. I also started looking at the Depo in depth online and read my fair share of horror stories, but came across an interesting section on wikipedia where it had been used to essentially chemically cauterise paedophiles.

You can bet your sweet ass I did not return to the hospital for my next injection after that.

It actually has a very dark and seedy past, being used against ethnic minorities to control the population as well as against the LGBT+ community for their "unusual sexual behaviour". Nope, not having any of that in my system. This did help explain my deceased sex drive and after my relationship nearly exploded we came to the conclusion that things had to change, this being one of them.

August 1st 2017

In September 2016 I decided to come off the shot, one month before my next injection was due. There was never a clear indicator as to when my life would become normal again and there was still a lot of crying and misplaced anger. It took around 9 months for my period to return and my mood really started to mellow around about the same time.

As you can see from the above mugshot, the Depo shot was not quite done fucking with me. As a teenager I had the occasional outbreak and one of the amazing side effects of the shot was beautiful clear skin. However what I hadn't realised is that my hormones were keeping a tally chart of every spot I'd ever missed and decided I needed to have them all at once.

These were painful and they were miserable. They made me cry and I felt like people were looking at me all the time. They were so weepy and sore and I literally had no other option but to keep on top of my skin care and wait the worst of it out. Coverage was like running out of bullets in a gun fight and throwing my gun.

January 19th 2018

It felt like the most drawn out waiting game of my life for these hormonal fueled lovelies to kindly fuck off, although I now have a new undying love for Mario Badescu products which I can kindly share in another post if anyone is interested as I can completely sympathise with anyone battling to keep their skin clear.

I found that a lot of the breakouts left me with some lovely pink marks that really stood out on my fair skin, so what probably looked like nothing to everyone else felt like a beacon of second puberty to me.

March 25th 2018

Majority of the marks and the unwanted texture has faded now, and I'm now one of the lucky girls that tends to suffer with their spots only when the red wave comes crashing down. Which is a very small price to pay in the grand scheme of things.

I've taken away many lessons when it comes to contraception, primarily that we need to be doing far more intensive research into the negative side effects it has on women and how we can work to change and adapt these medications. Many people were outraged when the male pill was not released because the side effects were the same, and while I believe that is a complete crock of shit, the fact is that no one should be suffering through these side effects.

The world needs less money spent on boner medication and more on the wellness of women who are simply trying to take control of their reproductive rights.