Not now (I definitely need the estrogen now, alas), but I did earlier in my life. I tried the combined pill age 21 (Microgynon) and it made my boobs big - I felt like Pamela Anderson
And I also got some of the side effects I have now - jitters, feeling like I'm throbbing or pulsing or have a loud heart beat, racing pulse sometimes and heart palps.
So I went back to the doctor and got a POP - Norgeston - which was levonorgestrel. That suited me great. I stayed on it about 9 years and I just had a very light spotting kinda period for 5 days, once a month.
When I was 30, I decided I wanted to be
au naturelle and not on any hormones.
That proved to be the biggest mistake EVER. I often wonder what my life would have been like if I'd just stayed on the levonorgestrel
I was immediately hit with painful heavy periods - eventually to the point that I passed out, sweated, had runny poop and writhed around in pain in a kinda 'attack' on the first day or two. I discovered if I took Naproxen as soon as I got my period, it stopped all this happening and thought I had everything figured out. But after 5 years I got pains outside my period, twinges and pulls and bruise like pains. And to cut a long story short, was diagnosed with mild endo after a lapararoscopy.
I was put on desogestrel POP just before that surgery to suppress the endo. I didn't like it. I had zero libido on it, headaches... I just didn't like it. After a year, I tried to go back to levonorgestrel/Norgeston - but it didn't work the way it had before. I bled constantly on it, dark brown sludge
After another sludge-y year [vomit emoji sadly lacking here], my GP said I had to stop trying it now - I could either double the dose or go back to desogestrel. I didn't like the idea of doubling the dose (although now I wish I'd tried that) so I went back to desogestrel and stayed on it for 9 years.
Then I hit low estrogen bonanza time. Which brings us to here
The thing to say about desogestrel, is that it suppresses your ovaries' estrogen levels to within the early follicular phase. Which is low. So it means you're not getting much estrogen from your ovaries as you enter peri. I guess this isn't a terrible thing if you replace the estrogen with HRT but I think it means you hit peri hard.
Which is all to say.... if I could do it all over again, I would go on a combined pill like Qlaira or Zoely instead of desogestrel POP. That would still have shut my ovaries down and suppressed the endo - but it would also have given me body identical estrogen at this time and not just progesterone. I'd probably have stayed on that until 50 and then gone straight onto continuous HRT. And if I can't get continuous HRT to work for me, that is still an option for me - I don't think Zoely would give me enough estrogen now though, and the Qlaira has different amounts of estrogen through the cycle which might not suit me either, but hey... that's what I might have tried. Because I think I needed estrogen years earlier than I finally got it....
Sorry for the essay