A trans teenager has opened up about her ordeal as she revealed she was forced into buying unregulated hormone drugs off the black market.
As 18-year-old Jess from Brighton, UK, revealed, she decided to take matters into her own hands after waiting for a gender identity clinic appointment for more than two years.
Not willing to “put her life on hold” and wait for several more years for her first-ever appointment of this kind, Jess resorted to sourcing unregulated hormone drugs on the black market to start her transition on her own.
As the girl admitted in Transitioning Teens documentary by BBC Three, she would “rather disappear off the Earth” than delay her transition any longer.
“I was originally planning to wait until I got into a clinic to start hormones, but then I kept seeing the waiting list go up and up and up and I just thought, it’s never going to end,” Jess says.
“When I was first referred it was a one year waiting list, now it’s gone up to a three year waiting list. You can’t just put your life on hold for three years.
“If I can’t transition then I would rather just disappear off the Earth. I can’t go private, I can’t afford to do that, so my only option is to go online and find whatever I can.”
According to the reports, some 18,000 people in the country are waiting for their turn to have a gender identity clinic appointment, whereas many resort to the use of unregulated drugs to start their transition right away and avoid the long waiting lines. These drugs, however, not only pose a major risk to their health but also cost a lot.
“Some months… I’ve gone to buy a textbook or something like that and I’ve been like no, I can’t actually get that because I have to save a certain amount of money for hormones. It just adds up and adds up, last year I spent hundreds of pounds on these medications,” Jess added.
Speaking of how she gets her hormone drugs off the black market, the teenage girl added: “You just have to go off word of mouth. There’s no one overseeing this, it’s all black market. You send the money and hope what you get is hormones. I don’t know who to turn to when something goes wrong.”
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