Author: Michelle Lodge

The “morning-after pill” is available to a second generation at Jennifer’s home. “I have three teenagers, two boys and a girl, in the house,” she says, explaining that she keeps My Way (levonorgestrel) on hand. “Anyone who needs it can take it or give it to anyone else who does, including their friends.” Jennifer, now 41, benefited from having the pill when she was in her twenties and early thirties to avoid pregnancy after unprotected sex or potential failure of regular birth control. She took the pill first at 22, when her partner’s condom broke during intercourse, and then at…

Veda has used both the so-called abortion pill and a dilation and curettage (D&C) procedure to end two separate pregnancies.  When she was 20, the now 27-year-old mother of a healthy toddler went to a clinic to get the abortion pill, a shorthand name for two different medicines, mifepristone, sold under the brand name Mifeprex, and misoprostol, which are taken a few days apart. “I experienced heavy bleeding, cramping, then dizziness,” she explained, describing the side effects caused by the pills. “It felt like a menstrual cycle, except for the dizziness.”  Once Veda thought she might be pregnant, she had…

Scott Stossel knows about prescription drugs and their side effects. Since the age of 10, he has been treated with a cornucopia of medicines to address severe anxiety caused by a long list of phobias, including separation anxiety, fear of vomiting, flying, and vomiting while flying and, less common, cheese. The drugs he was prescribed, some of which proved helpful at least for a time, have also caused him to experience everything from extreme heart palpitations and fatigue to suicidal thoughts, blurred vision and the inability to urinate. After managing his anxieties for more than three decades, Stossel, now 45,…