Personal

Hormonal Birth Control Made Me Crazy

Kate Sloan

I went off birth control when my relationship ended two months ago, after being on it for over three years. In the weeks that followed, school started up again, I did some freelance work, socialized with friends and family, and basically just went about my life as usual – with one key difference: for the first time in three years, I felt 100% happy, well-adjusted, and sane.

When I started flooding my system with artificial hormones in April 2011, I was about to go through some major life changes: starting school, getting into my first sexual relationship with a cis dude, enduring the deaths and mourning of a few people I loved, and falling out of touch with some of my high school friends. So when I started to feel sad, antsy, isolated and irrational, I thought it was just the circumstances of my life transforming me into a different person. I thought, I guess this is my personality now. I wasn’t thrilled about it but I didn’t think it was fixable.

I’d have bad anxiety days, when I’d show up at school and have the unsinkable sensation that everyone around me was staring at me and whispering about me. I’d have bouts of depression so bad that I had to call my city’s distress centre and sob at them over the phone, or lie in bed all day staring at the wall. I’d get irrationally upset at things my boyfriend said or did. I’d look at my body in the mirror and absolutely hate what I saw. My creative output all but stopped and I knew I needed to write and make music but it just didn’t happen, no matter how much I tried.

In short, I had turned into a nutcase. I could see that it had happened, but, again, I thought it was just the new state of my life and that I couldn’t do anything to change it.

Since going off birth control, I’ve felt sunny, excitable, flirty, creative, juiced up, carefree, and ambitious. I’m taking six very challenging courses with heavy workloads at school but I’m breezing through them with excellent grades and not giving a fuck what my classmates think of me. I wake up every day excited to put on a cute outfit, skip to the streetcar stop and go on a new day’s adventure. And my creative output is up up up.

As happy as I feel… I also feel kind of angry. Angry that I had no idea how much birth control was messing me up. Angry that the side effects of birth control are so often misrepresented or downplayed when they can actually literally transform your life. Angry that my doctor told me I should continue with hormones when I asked her to give me a copper IUD instead. Angry that I lost three years of my life to lunacy and turmoil.

Sure, there are some downsides of going off BC – my skin is a tad spottier, my periods will be unpredictable when they start back up, my sex drive is once again high to the point of almost being unmanageable, and my weight loss has slowed right down – but I think mental health is way more important than any of those things. I’ll happily be a zitty, chubby, horndog version of myself if it means I get to be outgoing, cheerful, productive and creative. That trade-off is a no-brainer.

I’ve spoken to a few friends who have corroborated my experiences, and now I’m wondering: did this happen to you? Do you know people who’ve gone through this too? Do you consider your mental health when you make contraceptive decisions? Are you as pissed off as I am that you didn’t know about this sooner?

5 Things I’m More in Touch With, Now That I’m Single Again

Kate Sloan

God, I can’t believe that prior to my break-up this past weekend, it had been over three years since the last time I was single. I mean, wow, man. In high school I sort of conceptualized myself as a “forever alone” type, so it’s truly astonishing to me that I was in a relationship for that long – that someone actually liked me enough to want to be with me and stay with me.

But what’s even more astonishing is that I wanted to be single again, which is what prompted the break-up – and that I’m enjoying the hell out of it already. Yeah, I miss my ex occasionally, like when I see a movie he would’ve liked or when something hilarious happens to me that I wish I could tell him about – but the benefits outweigh the costs and I am loving the single life.

Here are 5 unexpected things I’ve been getting back in touch with, since my break-up…

1. My natural cycle.

Well, not quite yet, but soon. Yes, an exciting announcement: I’ve gone off hormonal birth control!

While I dig how it’s kept my periods regular and my skin relatively calm, I’ve never been thrilled about pumping myself full of hormones, especially given that I’ve got a family history of breast cancer, a fact that doesn’t bode well when mixed with estrogen. And of course, birth control comes with a host of possible side effects, which, for me, included increased cramps, premenstrual irritability, depression, and sometimes suicidal ideation.

I’m looking forward to seeing what my ovaries and uterus will do when left to their own devices. A couple years before going on HBC, I was diagnosed with a benign ovarian cyst that really messed with my cycles, but it had shrunk considerably at the time that I started on the pill, so it’s possible it’s gone completely now – in which case, I might actually have regular periods! Hooray!

2. My natural vaginal aroma.

Uh, yeah, totally TMI. Sorry-not-sorry.

When I’m sexually active, I’m always worrying about vaginal smells, even though I consider myself body-positive and my partners have always told me not to concern myself with that stuff.

I mean, when I knew I was going to receive oral sex for the first time at age 16, I snuck away to the bathroom and gave myself a pre-cunnilingus scrubdown with DivaWash. And the girl told me I tasted slightly soapy so probably I shouldn’t have bothered.

Well, anyway. Now that no one’s face is down there regularly, I’m being less obsessive about keeping things pristine in that region. And it’s nice. I’m discovering that I actually don’t hate the way I smell. Maybe it’s the changes I’ve made to my diet and exercise routine lately, but the fragrance is actually kind of… sweet. Earthy. Natural. Lovely. Hmm…

3. Flirty energy.

Holy shit, this is blowing my mind.

I may have mentioned here before that my ex and I had an “arrangement” – a compromise between his desire for total monogamy and my complaint that the lack of flirtatious possibilities in my life was making me feel dead inside. (It’s possible that I’m a bit melodramatic.) We had negotiated that we were both allowed to flirt with and kiss other people, on a don’t-ask-don’t-tell basis. (That part wasn’t my idea. You might be able to tell from my blog that I always prefer to talk things out and be 100% honest, but the boyf just wasn’t into that.)

Well, despite this tiny negotiated degree of openness, I never felt quite right about flirting with other people while I was “taken.” I hated hiding it from my partner, and I felt like it was somehow dishonest to the people I was flirting with, too – like they’d believe it could go further than it actually could. Kissing was the hard limit; some folks tried to push past that boundary, thinking surely it would be okay, and I always had to stop them, even though it felt really unnatural to do so.

Obviously, all this guilt and concealment also meant that I couldn’t blog about my adventures, lest they be read by the boyfriend or by a relative or family friend who didn’t know about our monogamishness and wouldn’t have understood it if they did.

Now that all barriers to flirtation have been wrecking-ball’ed into oblivion, I can flirt as much as I damn well please. I haven’t really taken advantage of this fact yet – hell, it hasn’t even been a week yet – but just the option is making me feel giddy and enlivened. And if anything does happen, I can blog about it with wild abandon!

4. Being sexy in public.

By “in public,” I mostly mean “online,” because that’s the kind of person I am: an introvert and a geek. But I’m working on it.

Another thing my boyfriend didn’t like me to do was post naked or otherwise scandalous pictures of myself online. When you’re living in monogamy-land, this sort of makes sense, but every time I mentioned it to my poly friends, they’d be outraged on my behalf. “He doesn’t own your body!” they’d cry. “You can do what you want with your own tits and ass!”

I had really conflicted feelings about this, and I still do – but the fact remains that I do indeed hate the feeling of someone thinking they get to decide what I do and don’t do with my body. Sure, I understand why a monogamous partner wouldn’t want me to share my sexuality with another person… but I don’t consider my naked body to be an inherently sexual thing. Posting those pictures isn’t sexual for me; it’s an act of self-love, a confidence booster, a bold declaration of my womanhood and body-acceptance and unconventional beauty. It feels good, not illicit, and it feels like something I ought to be able to make my own decisions about.

Well, now that I’m single, I can. I’ve been posting as many (anonymous) naked pictures as I feel like posting. I’ve been enjoying the comments, guilt-free. Ohhhh yessss.

5. Being alone.

I don’t mean being single. I mean being physically alone. Being in a room that no one else is in. And not stressing that I “should be” spending time with someone. Just being.

The death knell of my relationship was when I realized that spending time with my partner had started to feel more like an obligation than a joy. It was another thing on my list that I had to do, like completing my sociology readings and emptying the dishwasher.

I have great love and fondness for my ex, but when someone is your Boyfriend-with-a-capital-B, it’s expected that you spend a lot of time with them. They expect it, and so do other people in your life. As an introvert, and someone with a lot of schoolwork and work-work on my plate, that got to feel like a lot of pressure. And the pressure to spend time with him sucked the joy right out of it.

Last night I was lying in bed reading a book, and I stopped and just thought to myself, “There is nowhere I’m supposed to be right now. There is nothing I’m supposed to be doing. There is no one who’s disappointed that I’ve decided to take tonight for myself.” And that realization was BLISSFUL. I sank down into the covers, took a long sip of tea, and buried my head back in my book. Mmm, heaven. Sheer heaven.

Look, I’m not saying the break-up didn’t make me sad. It did. And I’m not saying I’m never lonely, because sometimes I am. But by and large, I can see that this was the right decision for me. I’m thrilled with my life right now, even though I’m busy as hell with school and work and people keep asking me in hushed tones whether I’m “okay.”

I am more than okay. I’m reclaiming myself.

What was the best part of your last break-up? Got any advice for me on this journey of “finding myself” again?

Can Butt Plugs Cure Constipation?

Kate Sloan

Am I getting a reputation for being that chick who blogs about pooping? And a follow-up question: do I care?

This past week, three whole days went by without me evacuating my chute, if you know what I’m sayin’. That has never happened to me before. I was very worried.

I’ve been eating fewer calories lately to lose weight (that’ll be a whole ‘nother post, sometime in the murky future) and the other day I ate FIVE LARGE CARROTS because I am a lunatic. That’s probably what caused it.

I tried everything I could think of – short of regular ol’ laxatives, because I wanted to reserve those for a true emergency. I drank a fuckton of water to lubricate the pipes. I took an herbal psyllium husk supplement and waited 12+ hours. I walked around and jumped up and down. I ate more fiber, more fats. Nothin’.

Then I had a brilliant idea. There have been times in the past when I’ve inserted a butt plug, only to need to take it out again a few minutes later on account of sudden-onset bathroom requirements. This was always annoying before, but maybe now it would be a solution.

I poured a couple drops of Pink silicone-based lube on my medium Njoy Pure Plug and slipped it inside. I chose the Pure Plug because it’s heavy, so my butt would really be able to feel it and maybe it could wake up my intestines. (Man, I am so not a doctor.) I was prepared to switch out the medium plug for the larger version after a few minutes if necessary… but it wasn’t necessary.

After about 5-10 minutes of rhythmic clenching, hopin’ and prayin’, I heard angels singing hallelujah as my intestines started to do their thing. And then I went into the bathroom, took out the plug, and all became well with the world.

My theory on why this worked, which is backed by no medical knowledge whatsoever, is that the plug stimulated peristalsis. My butt was like, “Hey! There’s something in here! We better clear it out!” and other stuff was cleared out in the process too. Kind of sort of makes sense, right?

Mr. Will, another sex blogger, presented an alternate explanation: perhaps the lube was a factor. Indeed, the lube I used contains aloe vera, which some people use as a suppository when constipated. Soooo… yeah. That probably makes more medical sense than my theory.

Do you ever use sex toys to deal with your medical problems? (You probably shouldn’t. I’m not a doctor, I’m not responsible for the choices you make, you should always check with a medical professional, etc. You know the drill!)

Two-Year Blogiversary!

Kate Sloan

That’s right, Girly Juice is two years old today!

With that in mind, here are 10 things I’ve learned from the past two years of sex blogging:

1. “I have a sex toy blog” is a great conversation starter. Whether or not you can tell from reading what I write here, I’m pretty shy in real life. I tend to be that person who hangs out in the corner, smiling and nodding, until someone asks me a question. And if the question is “What do you do?” or “What are you up to?” then I always have a great (and sometimes show-stopping) response…

2. Sex toys do lose their appeal… eventually. Well, some of them. I’m no longer impressed by run-of-the-mill vibrators, standard dildos, or “innovative” gimmicks. A toy has to actually feel good and work well to get my attention – which means, unfortunately, that many things I receive these days just don’t thrill me. I often get asked if sex toys start to “get old” when you’ve tried dozens of them, and the answer is: the mediocre ones do.

3. Materials matter. I used to have a somewhat laissez-faire attitude about materials – I knew to avoid jelly at all costs, but I assumed everything else must be at least passably safe. Well, I was wrong. I’ve learned that porous toys can give me infections, and that phthalates can be present even in toys that claim to be phthalate-free. I grow less and less trusting of mega-sized toy companies by the day, because they seem to lie about their toys’ materials so damn often. My vagina is healthier and happier now that I stick to non-porous, legitimately phthalate-free toys.

4. Rumbly vibrations rule. When I first started reviewing toys, I was kind of unimpressed with vibrators, because the only ones I’d tried had been buzzy as fuck, always making me numb within minutes and leading to disappointing and difficult orgasms. The first super-rumbly vibe I discovered was the Wahl (thanks to Epiphora, whose recommendations are always stellar), and it changed my life. Suddenly, orgasms were easy. And not only that, but they actually felt better. Since then, I’ve discovered my favorite rumbly vibes, the We-Vibe Tango and Salsa, and I use them on a near-daily basis because they’re just that fantastic. This is the kind of success story I wish on anyone who pursues greater pleasure through sex toys.

5. Strap-ons aren’t just for lesbians or pegging… Men can use them on women too. I should probably write a whole post on this topic, and maybe I will. My boyfriend, ever the mature and sexually giving hero of my life, has happily strapped on various dildos over his flesh-and-blood dick to add some variety to our sex life from time to time. If I’m in the mood for something huge, something tiny, or something with a more intense texture than a natural penis can provide, I can get it. Of course, my boyfriend’s penis isn’t neglected – he just knows it’s not the only tool in his toolbox, and I think that’s wonderful!

6. Everyone wants to review sex toys, but most people don’t know (or don’t want to know) what it actually entails. As I discussed in my sex toy reviewer FAQ, playing with toys is actually a pretty minimal part of what goes into making a blog like this happen. I spend most of my work hours writing, editing, answering e-mails, managing ads, and generating endless links. I’m not saying it’s not fun (hell, I love writing!), but I think it’s pretty different from what most people are envisioning when they excitedly ask me, “How can I get into your line of work?!”

7. The sex-positive community has fewer creepers than you would think. While I complain about deceptive fetishists and other people of that ilk, 90% of those encounters have happened to me in non-sexual sectors of the internet. When I talk openly about sex in a way that’s smart and thoughtful, I find I tend to attract mostly people who want to talk about sex in similarly smart and thoughtful ways. It helps that the sex-positive community is all about consent and tends to shun people who lack respect and decency. There will always be those weirdos who silently favorite all the tweets where I mention masturbating, but those people are greatly outweighed by folks who are genuine, kind, and only sexualize me with my explicit consent.

8. My vagina is capable of more than I thought. Toward the beginning of my sex blogging career, a 1.5"-diameter bulb tripped me up. Nowadays, I can handle pretty big dildos if I warm up and lube up properly. I’m not quite a vaginal superhero, but I can do more than I thought I’d ever be able to do. (And hey, I’m going to a fisting workshop next week – that’s something to aspire to!)

9. It’s my blog; I make the rules. I went into this loosely modeling myself after sex bloggers I admired: people who wrote erotica, people who reviewed sex toys, or people who wrote clever how-to posts. Over time, I’ve grown to realize that I don’t have to stick to what’s already been done. I can write tirades about oppressive language, I can wax poetic about gender identity, I can give advice I wish someone had given me. There are no hard rules. When it’s your space, you can do what you want – and often, sticking to the truest part of yourself is what will attract more readers, reblogs, and retweets!

10. If you want something, take steps toward getting it. Sounds obvious, maybe, but 3+ years ago I never knew there was a way I could acquire sex toys that were out of my modest student price range and have a significant platform from which to speak my mind about sexuality. I also idolized people like Tristan Taormino, Epiphora, and Courtney Trouble, never anticipating that I would ever have Twitter exchanges with them or review stuff for them. If there’s someone you want to know, reach out to them. If there’s something you want to do, start – today. If you want to make something, get the materials together and begin. You never know what could happen!

Thanks for reading my blog, lovelies! What’s your favorite post from my past two years? What type of post would you like to see more of in the future here?

Breath and Energy Orgasms: Initial Attempt

Kate Sloan

A few weeks ago, I went to my local sex shop Come As You Are for a porn pyjama party (which is a story for another blog post, I guess!), and at the end of the night, they offered us a 10% discount on anything we wanted to buy from the store, as a way of thanking us for coming to the event and giving feedback on the porn they screened.

I perused the whole store before deciding I didn’t really need any more sex toys, but might want a book instead. Barbara Carrellas’ book Urban Tantra caught my eye because I’d previously read another book of hers. I bought it and have been reading one chapter each night before I go to bed.

Ms. Carrellas (long-term partner of trans icon Kate Bornstein, if you’re wondering) writes about sacred sex in a way that’s candid and easy to follow. She doesn’t bog down her readers with too many Sanskrit words or advanced yogic concepts, and she makes sure to explain in laymen’s terms any potentially unfamiliar ideas, like the seven chakras. Instead, she gives relatively concrete explanations of how to do things like breathe more deeply, raise your sexual energy levels, and even have what she calls a “breath and energy orgasm.”

I’m a skeptic about a lot of sacred sex stuff. I don’t know why. I’m a somewhat spiritual person, and obviously I love sex – but for some reason, I often find it difficult (physically and mentally) to combine those two ideas. Maybe it’s lingering anti-sex religious shame, or maybe just a lack of practice.

Last night, I got to the chapter in the book about breath and energy orgasms, one of the things that Barbara Carrellas is most known for. I read the whole chapter and then decided to give it a shot.

You should read the book for a more detailed explanation, but basically the technique involves “breathing into” certain chakras (energetic points on the body), starting at the lowest one (the perineum) and gradually working up the body until you get to the highest chakra (the top of the head). You’re supposed to do this while lying on your back, rocking your hips, and remaining constantly conscious of your breathing – kind of like an active meditation.

I’ll tell you right now that I didn’t have an orgasm, or anything resembling one. That doesn’t surprise me – it was my first attempt. But amazingly enough, I did get turned on – legitimately and tangibly so, with wetness and swelling and so on – and I did feel somewhat blissed out when I was done. It wasn’t like a post-orgasmic high; more like a post-yoga mellow. Except I was also sexually aroused.

This morning I woke up with a terrible headache. It feels almost like a hangover or some sinus tightness, except that it’s localized right on my sixth chakra (the “third eye” in between the eyebrows). In the book, Barbara mentions a few times that chakras can get blocked with “emotional gunk” and that this sometimes results in pain or discomfort localized to that spot, especially when you’ve been deliberately trying to move energy between chakras. I don’t know if that’s what happened to me, but that’s what it feels like. I guess my next step is to do some research on the sixth chakra and figure out what thoughts or feelings could be stopping it up.

I’m still having a lot of creeping skeptical thoughts about sacred sex, but I’m trying to keep an open mind. Part of being sex-positive, the way I understand it and live it, is being a perpetual explorer and student of all things sexual (all things that appeal to you, anyway).

What are your experiences with sacred sexuality? Have you ever had a breath and energy orgasm? Or any kind of metaphysical experience during sex or masturbation?