I see suicidal thoughts listed as a rare medicinal side effect. How can such a specific thing be a side effect? Can other specific thoughts be a side effect?
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I personally experienced this when I was younger, after starting a new brand of birth control pills. It caused severe mood swings and also increased my impulsivity. I wasn’t depressed or suicidal before, but the pill made me feel sudden extreme sadness and also high motivation to act on it. Fortunately, I had access to the crisis hotline. I was distracted long enough for the feelings to pass. If I had immediate access to a gun at that time, I might’ve acted without thinking. There really was no thought or desire to end my life, just feeling so overwhelmed by sadness and pain for no reason and would do anything to make it stop.
There’s this naive belief that bc is like taking a Tylenol that magically blocks pregnancy. In reality, they’re pills that disrupt women’s normal hormonal balance so their bodies won’t produce conditions conducive to conceiving. Hormones are responsible for many functions we conflate with thoughts, like hunger, satiety, sleepiness, wakefulness, fear, anxiety, sadness, joy, motivation, sexual arousal, love, excitement, focus, etc. They even influence how your body copes with pain and stress.
So a pill that changes one’s hormonal chemistry can result in a combination that results in suicidal ideation. It could be that it triggers motivation in someone who was already in emotional pain but too lethargic before to act on it. In someone else, it might trigger sadness in someone who is already impulsive. In my case, it triggered severe sadness, intense focus (which became fixation on negative thoughts), and high motivation (actively seeking out ways to stop the pain). When I switched to a brand with different combination of hormones that work better with my body’s chemistry, I returned to normal.
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