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At the end of my senior year of high school, I started taking a birth control pill for the first time. This pill was called Yaz, and it promised to rid me of my bad breakouts and debilitating cramps. My doctor, along with that ridiculously long information booklet with impossibly small print that comes with the pills, said that the odds of any side effects, especially the severe ones, were slim to none.
So I started taking Yaz. And, for a while, it was the best thing ever. My pimples went away and I no longer found myself incapacitated when the crimson wave came crashin’ through town. But that is, unfortunately, only the beginning of the story.
About six months into taking this pill, I noticed that none of my bras fit. And that’s an understatement. I was exploding. I then realized that I had, despite exercising, gained a significant amount …
… of weight. I felt lethargic, had chest pain, and was short of breath. I figured I was just stressed out and that it would go away once winter break rolled around. But by the time I got home for vacation, I was having full blown anxiety attacks every day, and dreaded waking up in the morning because I felt that awful.
Around the same time that this was happening, a friend told me that law suits were popping up all over the place against Yaz. People were claiming that they had experienced near fatal blood clots and strokes as a result of taking it. Others were reporting deeply exacerbated emotional issues. I soon switched to another pill, Loestrine, and, no lie, within days my boobs shrunk back to their normal size. I lost the strange extra weight and regained my normal lung capacity. Unfortunately, the anxiety issues outlasted my time on Yaz, and I ended up having take another medication.
In light of this type of Yaz-taking-experience being so common that there are Facebook ads targeting people “in need of legal representation for Yaz-related lawsuits,” it is utterly shocking to me that Bayer, Yaz’s parent company, has just had a new birth control pill, called “Beyaz” (so original, guys, really), now approved by the FDA. There are over 2,000 lawsuits against this pill, and they’re approving a new one with the same combination of hormones? Great. Really great.
I would love for the FDA to hit themselves in the head and reconsider their approval of this drug, but I know that’s just wishful thinking. The pharmaceutical business is a scary one, driven mostly by the desire for immense wealth no matter what cost consumers face. So, I can only hope that the complications associated with the combination of hormones in Yaz and now, “Beyaz,” will be more widely reported and understood by the public.
