Reading STEP 4 without panicking

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.

Tressa — taking your question as you asked it, because I think the thread has widened it.

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

What helped me was deciding in advance what I would do if things changed after stopping, so that I was not making that decision from inside a difficult month.

My prescriber's line was that stopping is not a door closing, and she was right in my case. Going back later was a conversation, not a re-application.

Something practical: I kept everything — the notes, the dates, the letters — for a year after stopping. It made the eventual conversation about restarting take four minutes instead of forty.

Thank you for writing this down. It helped.

Nobody here is going to think less of you for stopping. That was my genuine fear when I posted about it, and it was completely unfounded.

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.

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

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.

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.

Nothing useful, just that I have been exactly here.

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