What I put in place before I stopped

Started 17 July 2024 · 24 replies · 313 hearts · read 2.7k times

TillyHereford, UK · 17 July 2024

2 years ago

What I put in place before I stopped 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.

Anyway. Thank you for reading this far. Any experience of this stage gratefully received, and I will come back and say what happened.

104

DashSeattle, WA

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.

BenediktFacilitatorVienna, Austria

I want to say plainly that stopping, pausing and restarting are ordinary shapes in this community and nobody who has done any of them owes an explanation.

31me too 9

DelythBala, UK

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.

BastianFreiburg, DE

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

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.

BryonyMalvern, 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.

10me too 4

BramwellRipon, UK

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.

TressaSt Austell, UK

Bramwell has already said most of this and I want to add the one part that was different for me.

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.

TanviMumbai, IN

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.

Birdie BWhitstable, UK

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.

FabianBasel, CH

#10

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.

GabePhoenix, AZ

#11

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.

FenEly, UK

#12

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.

SinéadCork, IE

#13

Gently disagreeing with Fen, or rather adding the other half of it.

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.

BronLincoln, UK

#14

The grief part surprised me. I had not expected to grieve a medication and I did, for about a month, and then it passed.

11me too 3

TedIpswich, UK

#15

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

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.

6me too 2

GudrunAkureyri, IS

#16

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.

IdaRotterdam, NL

#17

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.

TillyHereford, UK

#18

Marking that I am here, in case that counts for anything today.

DashSeattle, WA

#19

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

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.

NikoTbilisi, GE

#20

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.

16me too 4

DelythBala, UK

#21

Here, reading, and glad you posted.

BastianFreiburg, DE

#22

I stopped and did not go back, and I am at peace with it, and I would not present that as a recommendation to anybody. It was my situation and my body.

BenediktFacilitatorVienna, Austria

#23

Adding a marker so the thread does not lose it: when the same practical thing gets named twice by two people who have never met, that is usually the sentence a newcomer needs, and it is rarely the one at the top.

BramwellRipon, UK

#24

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

13me too 5