Hormonal Birth Control Can Decrease Your Sex Drive—Here’s How

Somehow, the birth control discussion has devolved, not into an issue of informed choice versus uninformed choice, but one of left versus right. Every woman deserves to make decisions about what’s best for her own body, but time and time again, we aren’t given all the facts until it’s too late.

Birth control may have relegated unprotected sex and family planning to being a non-issue, but it has also caused irreparable harm to women, both physically and mentally. What’s infuriating is that this harm could’ve been prevented, had the bottom line of the medical and pharmaceutical industries not been at stake. Birth control doesn’t just increase your risk of depression, stroke, and so much more. Ironically enough, it also decreases your sex drive – here’s how.

Your Body and Brain Can Work Against Each Other

What’s really strange about hormonal birth control, especially if you’re taking it for contraceptive purposes, is that once those hormones begin to impact your brain, you might not even be interested in sex anymore. 

Though testosterone is the male sex hormone, women produce a small amount of it, and we need to. Testosterone in women contributes to a healthily functioning libido and is what helps us have an interest in sex. Because hormonal birth control introduces additional amounts of artificial versions of the hormones estrogen and progestin, the body’s adrenal and ovarian synthesis (basically, the process which produces certain hormones) becomes suppressed, limiting the amount of testosterone the body produces.

You might like sex as a concept (who doesn’t?), and you might appreciate that your chances of unplanned pregnancy on birth control aren’t what they are compared to being off it, meaning you should be able to have as much sex as you want, but you might be unable to get aroused or climax as your normally would. Your interest in sex altogether could decrease to abnormal levels. All of these crossed wires between your brain and your body are the fault of that testosterone suppression, caused by the artificial hormones coursing through your body.

A Campaign of Gaslighting

An informative video produced by the Harvard Medical School aims to address this issue – and like nearly every other mainstream source on the subject, it does so extremely poorly. We’re told that around 1 in 4 women experience this side effect, but we’re also told that “all medication has side effects.” Another explanation from a sex therapist says that while women may experience decreased libido on hormonal birth control, “many report no change to their level of desire,” and “some even report that they feel more desire while on the pill.” Um, what? In what world is this kind of manipulation (from the most highly regarded experts, of course) helpful?

If you’re experiencing decreased sex drive as a result of the pill, that isn’t normal – and it might not even be normal to feel a sharp increase in libido, which likely only happens due to the atypical increase of estrogen. It’s natural and healthy to feel sexual desire, and no amount of gaslighting on the subject should be acceptable. When the female body naturally produces arousal fluid, you shouldn’t need vats of store-bought lubrication to feel comfortable, nor should you have to force yourself to feel interested in having sex.

Harvard Medical School advises that if you experience decreased libido, you should try another form of oral contraception or hormonal birth control and see if you have similar effects – switching, increasing, or decreasing doses until you find the right fit. It also acknowledges that the contraception which causes the least change in other effects like acne, headaches, and mood swings is the formulation that most impacts sexual desire. But remember, ladies, 3 out of 4 women won’t be impacted!

If this kind of back-and-forth is meant to be comforting in some way, it’s doing a terrible job. No woman should be told (by medical professionals, no less) to play Russian roulette with her own hormones until she experiences a healthy amount of sexual desire. And no woman who’s experiencing inhibited sexual desire as a result of one of our culture’s most sacred cows should be told that while it sucks for her, other women taking birth control don’t experience that. They may even experience more desire. She’s just one of the unlucky few.

Are We Finally Ready To Ditch Birth Control?

It’s no wonder that many of us have less trust in medicine than ever before. We can do so much better, and we have to. The fundamental basics of our biological functions depend on it. We don’t have to settle for trying different hormones like guinea pigs. We deserve surety and contraception that works, with no side effects.

If this kind of narrative around the harmful effects of birth control is ambiguous to some, it shouldn’t be. This kind of rhetoric is meant to send a message to any woman who has serious concerns about what she’s putting in her body. Sure, you might have gained weight, be struggling with depression, and have zero sex drive to boot, but this is so much better than the alternative! Trying natural fertility awareness methods is just a roll of the dice that’s too risky, according to some – you’re practically guaranteed to wind up accidentally pregnant!

Being told that we don’t deserve to know our own bodies, or even worse, that the majority of women have no side effects even if we do, should be the last straw for us. We deserve better, and we can do better. Birth control doesn’t even do what it’s supposed to. It doesn’t produce a period (what you experience on the pill is withdrawal bleeding), and the benefits don’t really outweigh the cost. Aside from bearing a mental and physical load, you’re not even able to be interested in sex? That alone, in and of itself, is reason enough to ditch birth control entirely.

It’s abundantly clear that we have an overprescription epidemic in this country. Birth control, antidepressants, you name it. Of course, the two are inextricably linked, yet we’re told to soldier on, wading through mental illness and nasty side effects. If it hasn’t dawned on us already, now is the time to realize the obvious: We’re the experiment, and we can either take our lumps and play a dangerous game with our bodies, or give up the system that neither works for us nor cares about us.

Closing Thoughts

If you’re going forward with your birth control prescription thinking you’ll be just as interested in sex as you were before, you deserve to know that countless women struggle with these kinds of issues, and your doctor may have neglected to tell you about it. You’re not alone, but you don’t have to take this lying down, either. Wanting access to our body’s natural reactions shouldn’t be a privilege only a few of us get to experience. It’s for every woman to experience, but you might have to stand up for yourself and your body in the process.

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