I stopped for surgery and it was fine

Started 1 December 2025 · 14 replies · 119 hearts · read 1.5k times

GabePhoenix, AZ · 1 December 2025

8 months ago

Starting a thread on this because it keeps coming up in ones and twos: I stopped for surgery and it was fine

Writing this partly to ask and partly because writing it down usually tells me what I think.

My honest position is that I do not know whether to change something or wait, and I have been going round that question for three weeks without getting anywhere.

I have been reading this circle for months and everybody else's account of this stage sounds much tidier than mine, which is either reassuring or the wrong conclusion entirely.

The thing that has surprised me most about this stage is how much of it is about other people rather than about me.

Not looking for a plan. Just company, and whatever anybody found at the same stage.

BronLincoln, UK

What I found hardest was other people treating it as a failure while my prescriber treated it as a normal clinical decision. Their reaction was the difficult part, not the decision.

7me too 8

BenediktFacilitatorVienna, Austria

I am pleased with how this went and I want to say so. Not every thread needs a facilitator and this one mostly did not.

SinéadCork, IE

The practical thing I got right was writing down why I was stopping while I was still on it. Two months later I could not have reconstructed my own reasoning.

NikoTbilisi, GE

Mine was a side-effect decision, taken carefully, with two conversations and a proper look at the alternatives first. It was the right call and it was still sad.

DelythBala, UK

Reading this properly rather than skimming, which is all I have to offer today.

TillyHereford, UK

I would gently suggest keeping your journal going through the stopping. Mine is the only reason I know what actually happened in those months rather than what I remember happening.

FabianBasel, CH

Six months off and I am fine. Different, and fine. I came back to this circle to say so because when I was leaving I could not find anybody who had.

Birdie BWhitstable, UK

Building on what Fabian wrote rather than answering the original question.

The tapering conversation was more nuanced than I expected. It was not simply stop or continue; there were several shapes in between and I had not known that.

DashSeattle, WA

The thing nobody told me is that stopping is a process with its own weeks in it. I had expected a date and got a season.

TanviMumbai, IN

#10

Mine was a planned stop with my prescriber over about four months. Having a plan made the difference between a decision and a collapse.

FenEly, UK

#11

I stopped because my prescriber said so, which is a very different experience from choosing it, and it took me longer to make peace with because it was not mine.

BastianFreiburg, DE

#12

Fen said something I want to sit with for a second.

My stop was abrupt because of a supply problem rather than a choice, and I want to name that as its own category. It happens and it is nobody's decision.

BenediktFacilitatorVienna, Austria

#13

I want to name the thing this circle does when somebody says they have stopped: it treats it as ordinary. That is not automatic anywhere else and it is worth saying out loud here.

TedIpswich, UK

#14

The circle carried me through the first eight weeks after stopping more than anything else did. Nothing anybody said, particularly. The turning up.

4me too 2