A recipe for estradiol "stickies", an alternative mechanism for transfeminine HRT utilizing existing estrogen tablets.
Original text sourced from https://stickies.neocities.org/.
Below is the original zine heavily edited for formatting while trying to keep the spirit of the author's points, with notes by me at the end (marked *#).
-Vee (PurposeUnknown), purposeunknown.(eth/xyz)

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Estradiol Stickies
Preparation and Usage

Disclaimer:
Don't do any of the stuff I describe in this document!
If you, or anyone, does anything written here and something goes bad?
That’s not on me! Think about it!
It’s not reasonable to take experimental hormone formulations based on anonymous documents you find online!(*1)

Recipe (makes 20 stickies):
Ingredients
8 mg estradiol (4 · 2 mg generic E tablets)(*2,*3)
1.2 mL (≈ 1/4 tsp) guar gum
3.1 mL (≈ 5/8 tsp) water
(for a mold, 3/64 in. thick / 1/4 in. diameter washer)

This recipe makes 20 doses containing ~0.4 mg E each, and take ~24 hours to dissolve after sticking to my gums.

Step 1: Grind!
Grind the tablets into a fine powder.
― I’ve used a (clean, ceramic) mortar and pestle for this, but I’ve also split the tablets with a knife / pill splitter and then crushed them against a dinner plate.

Step 2: Mix!
Measure out the guar gum and mix thoroughly with the pill powder.
― I use the same 1/8 tsp measuring spoon for measuring the guar gum in this step, and the water in the next step.

Step 3: Wet!
Mix the water and dry ingredients thoroughly.
I add a little water if the dough is too dry, knead/work it for a while and let it dry out a bit if too wet.

Step 4: Split!
Divide into equal portions.
― If I’m not using a mold I usually roll it into a little snake and then divide it into the # of doses.

Step 5: Press!(*4)
Form the pieces into flat circles.
― I've rolled them into little balls, squishing them down, and also used a washer as a mold.
The washer hole holds exactly the right amount to just fill it up and pop the discs out without dividing up the dough first.
If not using a mold, a small object with a known thickness can be used when pressing the pieces flat.
If they're too thin, they curl as they dry and don’t last 24 hours; too thick and they're bulky and last way longer than 24 hours.

Step 6: Dry!
Let dry completely.
― I leave them on a plate overnight somewhere they won’t be disturbed.
They shrink quite a lot when they dry up.
Once dry I put them in a pill bottle.

(flat, circular, hard and tough material, opaque, ~1.1 mm (≈ 3/64 in) thickness, ~6.5 mm (just over 1/4 in) diameter)

Usage
After breakfast, I brush my teeth and then using my tongue, I push a sticky onto the front of my upper gums between a canine and an incisor.
Every day I switch sides. After applying, I don't eat or drink for ~1 hour.
Over time the sticky will slowly hydrate, soften, and eventually dissolve after ~24 hours.
They stay put pretty well up there - only a few situations have led to them falling off: drinking ~1 hour of putting one on, and blowing my nose.
I’ve also accidentally squished them when washing my face too hard, and when sneezing.

They don’t taste like anything.
They can be mildly uncomfortable before hydrating and softening up.
Eating, drinking, brushing my teeth, rinsing my mouth, kissing, oral sex, talking for extended periods of time, and drinking through a straw all seem fine.
They don’t really get food stuck in them either.

If one comes unstuck before it’s fully hydrated I can usually push it back into place with my tongue, it'll eventually readhere.
Once hydrated it's trickier but possible; I usually don’t bother with re‐sticking and put on a fresh one instead.
I tried sticking them on my lower gums - they'd slip too easily.
I also tried sticking them on before bed rather than after breakfast - they didn't dissolve as well and felt bulkier compared to earlier in the day.
Wasn’t as bad when I split doses into morning and night - 12‐hour stickies aren't as thick as 24‐hour ones.
I do find half‐thickness 12‐hour stickies handy for later in the day if I need a replacement / forgot to take my morning dose.

All these quirks are, I suspect, consequences of their composition.

Discussion:
What:
I think of them as E trapped in a guar gum disc.
The process is probably complex; my educated guess is the E is released through the sticky eroding as it swells with water and rubs against the mouth lining, before entering the bloodstream through said lining.

The academic literature about this might call it a buccal mucoadhesive drug delivery system for controlled or slow release of E; I just call them stickies instead.

Why:
For many reasons. To start, different HRT forms all have noteworthy downsides:

Patches are great for steady E blood levels(*6) via controlled release, potentially effective with small daily doses (≈ 0.1–3 mg/day?), but they're expensive, and kind of a pain in the ass.

Pills are cheap/convenient, but if swallowed the E is largely metabolized by the liver ("first pass"), requiring higher doses (≈ 4–8 mg/day?), affecting the liver, and producing a different ratio of E and its metabolites in the blood fron what one would expect.

Taken sublingually, pills avoid "first pass" - conventional thinking says it's more effective vs. swallowing - but blood E levels increase and drop very quickly, meaning a higher dose is required.
How can one reliably measure and make decisions about blood E levels this way?

Injections also avoid "first pass", with more gradual/predictable and measurable E levels.
I averaged ~0.5 mg per day with injections.
But injections are also a pain in the ass - nevermind potential shortages and doctors’ (lack of) willingness to prescribe it.

Many people have trouble getting HRT - cost, lack of local services, uncooperative or downright hostile medical professionals - it sucks.
People have talked about finding ways to synthesize HRT at home (my original intent).
But the more I thought about it, the more I worried it wasn't something just anyone could do.
Even if I could synthesize E at home, I'd need specialized equipment to purify and measure it. Pain in the ass.
I wanted to try and solve some of those problems for myself, show what’s possible, and take a step toward a world where HRT is cheaper, easier to get, and works better.

How:
I realized E is easy/cheap to make industrially - maybe I could take advantage of the pills already out there.
I thought about making a controlled release formulation - even if it wasn't as good as patches, a 0.5 mg dose would be 1/8th of my prescribed daily dose of 4 mg - I'd have enough estrogen for 8x as many doses, and much more stable blood E levels! Worth a try.

I wanted whatever I came up with to be something just about anyone could do - no weird ingredients, no special equipment, nothing expensive.
That’s why I chose guar gum - cheap, widely available, people eat it all the time.
It’s also why I don’t use a scale in the recipe(*5) - some people won't have a precise enough scale to weigh the ingredients.
The result is a recipe that's no more complicated than making fresh pasta using only common household objects.

After researching and deciding in late 2019 what I wanted to try, I spent most of 2020 figuring out and testing this formulation on myself.
I haven’t taken E any other way since March 2020.(*6)
I started off making only two doses at a time using split E tablets, a tiny bit of guar gum, and ~<12 drops of water.
Over time I learned what to aim for - I scaled up the recipe, both for convenience and consistency by using larger, easily measurable amounts.

I originally took ~0.25 mg per day, then tried 0.5 mg per day (too strong and abrupt).
That scared me - I couldn’t do blood work at the time, so I went back to 0.25 mg until I got my first blood work results back.
(dosage context: worth noting that I’m a fairly small person.)
Based on the numbers I increased my dose by 50%, and more blood work results reflected that increase.
I then stopped changing the dose and fine-tuned the process and dimensions.

For every formula/process change I stuck with it for ~2 weeks to learn about it, changing only one thing at a time.
I kept a log book with daily entries labelled by batch, sticky size/shape, time of application, and dissolve time.
This worked well for tuning them to last ~24 hours.
For a fixed batch size and diameter, more E = stronger stickies, more guar gum = thicker stickies / longer duration.

Thanks:
Thanks to my friends for all the help they provided with proofreading, editing, and design.
I’m not sure I would have gotten this all done without the help, and I know that if I had, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as good.
Thanks also to the researchers whose work on buccal mucoadhesive drug delivery systems (especially ones w/ natural polymers) I read before beginning work on my formulation.
Those papers showed me what was possible and inspired me to try finding my own way.

Contact: estradiol.stickies [ at ] protonmail.com.

Estradiol Stickies: Preparation and Usage is marked with the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
Feel free to share, print, or download this file.

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(*1) Emphasizing this, but also: I'M NOT A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL, THIS IS NOT MEDICAL ADVICE. EVERYONE RESPONDS DIFFERENTLY TO HRT. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT YOU DO WITH THIS INFORMATION. IF AT ALL POSSIBLE, GO THROUGH A DOCTOR, INFORMED CONSENT CLINIC, OR OTHER OFFICIAL CHANNEL - DIY IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. THE ONUS IS ON YOU TO DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH.
(*2) The Teva pills (blue with a b inscribed on them) work best here; in my experience other ones are thicker and will work, but make stickies that are too big/uncomfortable for me.
(*3) I use 15mg of E as the base, so I double the batch size to round it out (15 pills (30mg E), made into 40 stickies @ 0.75mg E each). See *1.
(*4) Because of *3, I use a bigger washer - 3/8" x 1", 1" Outside Diameter, 0.080 inch thickness.
(*5) I /do/ use a scale to get precise measurements.
(*6) I found this zine in late 2022, worked on my own recipe throughout 2023 and have been taking this consistently since mid-2023.