Restarting on a different medication entirely

Started 24 May 2026 · 15 replies · 95 hearts · read 2k times

MableBolton, UK · 24 May 2026

2 months ago

Restarting on a different medication entirely Writing it down partly to work out what I actually think.

I have been reading here for a few weeks and have not posted, so this is me posting.

I have read the guides here, which were more useful than anything else I have found, and I still have a question about the timing that they do not cover.

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

No rush on replies. I am not going anywhere and neither, apparently, is this stage.

ZoraSarajevo, BA

The shame was the worst of it for me, and the shame was also the least justified part. Nothing about a break requires an apology.

NikolaiSofia, BG

To the opening post rather than to the thread: Mable, this is my version of it.

I started again from the bottom step, deliberately, even though I had been much further along before. It was the right call and my prescriber agreed without me having to argue.

BobbieRochdale, UK

What I got wrong the first time was doing it alone. The restart had a circle, a buddy and a proper conversation attached, and it went completely differently.

6me too 9

BenediktFacilitatorVienna, Austria

Something worth noticing whenever it happens in a thread like this: somebody puts down the difficult version rather than the tidy one, and nobody flinches. That is not automatic and it is most of what we are for.

OttilieCheshire, UK

Something worth knowing: my second start had different side effects from my first. Not worse, different. I had expected an exact repeat and got a variation.

InêsPorto, PT

Quietly agreeing from the other side of the country.

Gwen DAberystwyth, UK

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

Restarting after a cost break here. The situation changed, I went back, and nobody at the surgery treated it as anything other than routine.

AurelBucharest, RO

The thing I would say is that a break is information. Mine told me a great deal about which changes had been the medication and which had become mine.

7me too 3

MableBolton, UK

A break does not undo what you learned. That was the thing I most needed to hear and the thing I least believed at the time.

7me too 6

ZoraSarajevo, BA

#10

I restarted at a lower step than I stopped at, on purpose, and stayed there for six months. Slowly was the correct speed for a second attempt in my case.

NikolaiSofia, BG

#11

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

I came back to the same circle I had left and three people remembered me. That mattered more than I would ever have predicted.

BobbieRochdale, UK

#12

My honest experience is that the restart was better than the original in every respect except that I had lost some ground I would rather have kept.

NerysRhyl, UK

#13

The conversation I dreaded took under five minutes and contained no judgement of any kind. I had spent a month rehearsing for it.

BenediktFacilitatorVienna, Austria

#14

A reminder that this circle holds every stage at once, which is its strength and occasionally its difficulty. Somebody in year three answering somebody in week three needs to say which they are.

5me too 5

InêsPorto, PT

#15

I found the first fortnight of the restart emotionally heavier than the first fortnight of the original start, which I had not anticipated at all.

6me too 1