Cost made the decision for me

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.

Tanvi, I have been where you are and I would rather say so than stay quiet.

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.

Picking up Niko’s point rather than starting a new one.

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.

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.

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

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.

I would say do not stop in a difficult week if you can possibly help it. My decision was sound and the timing was terrible and the timing is what made it hard.

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.

Nothing to add except that I am glad this thread exists.

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.

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

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.

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.