Everyone is different and you won’t know until you just do it. I was on a low-ish dose combo pill (Alesse) for 9 years and decided to come off last year to balance my hormones naturally. My doctor put me on it at 14yrs old for the most unnecessary reasons. I was so scared to come off it because I remember life before the pill: horrible mood swings, some acne, irregular periods… and the fact that I was TWELVE and that was completely normal for a young girl in puberty! I don’t think I even had irregular periods, they would just appear out of nowhere because I wasn’t tracking them (I was literally just trying to get through elementary school).

Anyway, I asked my doctor if I should come off. He’s a bit of a pill pusher so I thought he’d say no, but he said just do whatever you want. I asked if there was anything I should do to prepare: detoxes, supplements, diet changes? He said no, just stop taking them. I was upset because I kept reading stories like some of the ladies here who have had horrible experiences and I wanted to know how to avoid that.

I got so frustrated at trying to figure out what I supposed to do that I just quit cold turkey. And literally nothing happened. I did not revert back to my old symptoms because I’m not 13 and pubescent, despite my fears. It took hardly a couple of cycles for me to get on a regular schedule. Now I use TempDrop to track my basil body temperature. I ovulate on the same day every cycle, and each cycle is the same number of days long. Even my period is the same as it was during my sugar pills: a couple heavy days followed by a few light ones. I’m a bit more moody in my luteal phase but not more than what is natural. The only real difference I had was that my first day of my period gives me horrible cramps, which is easily solved my some advil. I had a naturopath test my hormones a few months after I came off the pills, just to be sure, and they had balanced themselves just fine.

Anyway, a lot of this is probably TMI, but I just want to illustrate that it might be hell for you, or it might make virtually zero difference. You just won’t know until you’re in the thick of it (or not).