What the withdrawal trials actually show, in plain words

Started 9 November 2025 · 18 replies · 148 hearts · read 2.4k times

TillyHereford, UK · 9 November 2025

8 months ago

What the withdrawal trials actually show, in plain words Writing it down partly to work out what I actually think.

Long one, sorry. I have been chewing on this for a fortnight.

My experience of this stage has not matched any account I have read, which I assume means the accounts are tidier than the reality rather than that something is wrong.

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

Thanks all. Genuinely. This circle has been better company than I expected to find anywhere.

BramwellRipon, UK

Honest note: my first month off was much better than I had feared and my third month was much harder. The order surprised me.

BronLincoln, UK

Reading Bramwell, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

I came off during a pregnancy, on advice, and it was straightforward clinically and complicated emotionally, and I did not find anywhere to say that until this circle.

BenediktFacilitatorVienna, Austria

Gently: you have apologised three times in a post where you have done nothing that requires an apology. This circle does not need you to be further along than you are.

DelythBala, UK

My reason was that I no longer wanted to be doing it, which felt like an insufficient reason until my prescriber said it was a perfectly good one.

11me too 9

GudrunAkureyri, IS

Reading Bron, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

If you are reading this while deciding, the only thing I would push on is: is anybody clinical in the loop. Everything else is genuinely yours to weigh.

TanviMumbai, IN

Saying it out loud helps other people say it too. Thank you.

IdaRotterdam, NL

I came off because of cost, not because of anything clinical, and it took me a long time to say that without embarrassment. It is an extremely common reason and it is not a moral failing.

6me too 4

TressaSt Austell, UK

Gudrun — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.

Coming back a year after stopping to say that I am well, that it was the right decision for me, and that I still read here every week.

FenEly, UK

What Tanvi described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

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.

SinéadCork, IE

#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.

NikoTbilisi, GE

#11

The thing that made it manageable was that nothing about the decision was final. Reviewing it in three months was always an option and knowing that took the weight out of it.

DashSeattle, WA

#12

I stopped twice. The first time badly and alone, the second time properly and with support. The second one is the one I would describe as coming off.

GabePhoenix, AZ

#13

You have said something a lot of us have not managed to. Thank you.

TedIpswich, UK

#14

What I noticed after stopping was that the habits stayed longer than I expected and then quietly went. That was useful information about which habits had been mine.

FabianBasel, CH

#15

Coming back to what Dash wrote further up, because it is the bit I keep thinking about.

I stopped, and about six weeks later the background hum came back, and that was the part I was least prepared for. Not the physical side. The noise.

BryonyMalvern, UK

#16

What I would say to anybody considering it is to have the conversation before you decide rather than after. My prescriber had two options I had not known existed.

BenediktFacilitatorVienna, Austria

#17

Gently noting that we have three people offering different schedules and none of us is prescribing. Descriptions of what happened to you are welcome; instructions are not.

12me too 9

TillyHereford, UK

#18

Benedikt, thank you for that. It gives me somewhere to start from.

I came off for eight months and went back on, and I want both halves of that on the record because threads that only cover the leaving are only half a story.