I cannot afford the next three months so I have decided to stop on purpose

Started 21 October 2025 · 7 replies · 326 hearts · read 5.3k times

ZoëHackney, UK · 21 October 2025

9 months ago

Twenty-six, Hackney, paying out of pocket, watching every penny — and the pennies have run out.

Here is the arithmetic, without the numbers, because I know we do not do numbers here and honestly I do not want to type them. My rent went up in July. My hours at work were cut in September. The medicine is the single largest discretionary thing in my month and it is the only one I can actually cancel. I cannot cancel the rent. I have already cancelled everything else, including the gym, which was the other thing that was helping.

What I want to say, and the reason I am posting rather than just quietly disappearing off the site, is that I have decided to stop on purpose and on a date rather than drift into it. I have three weeks left of what I have got. So I am going to use them, tell my prescriber this week, and stop in the middle of November with a plan for the rest of the winter, instead of running out on a Wednesday and finding out at the pharmacy counter.

The reason I am doing it that way is something I read in this circle in the spring, from somebody whose name I have lost, who said that the worst version of stopping is the one that happens to you. I have thought about that all year.

What I would like: anything from people who have stopped for money reasons. Specifically, what did you put in place for the winter, and what do you wish you had done in the three weeks before. Not looking for cheaper sources. I have decided I am not going down that road at twenty-six with no medical supervision, and I would rather nobody suggest it.

109

PetraFacilitatorMelbourne, Australia

Zoë, first: deciding on a date is the single best thing in this post and I want other people to see it. Stopping on your own terms is a completely different psychological event from running out, even when the outcome for your body is identical.

Second, a boring question that is sometimes worth an hour: before you stop, have you had a proper look at whether anything changes your eligibility for support where you are? Circumstances that have changed — hours cut, rent up — sometimes move you into a bracket you were not in when you first asked. I am not promising you anything. I am saying that a refusal or a price is a snapshot of the month it was issued in, and people in appeals have had things move after a change in circumstances more than once.

Third: I have noted that you asked nobody to suggest a cheaper source and I will back that up as a facilitator. Please respect it, everyone.

52me too 11

BenediktFacilitatorVienna, Austria

On the three weeks: the practical thing people most often wish they had done is written down their own baseline while they still had it. Not weight. How you sleep, what your ordinary hunger feels like, what you can walk without thinking about it, what your mood does on a Sunday.

The reason is that appetite generally returns after stopping, and it returns faster than people expect, and in the middle of that it is very hard to tell what is happening to you. Having a page written in October by a calm person is worth a great deal to the same person in January.

44me too 8

MoBradford, UK

I made a flowchart for my appeal and I won, so I am obliged to say: have you actually asked, in writing, this month? Not last spring. This month, with the changed hours in the letter.

I lost twice and won on the third go with the same facts arranged differently. It took me two evenings and a printer. If you want, put your refusal in the appeals circle and four of us will go through what it actually says versus what it appears to say.

47me too 9

SadieSalford, UK

Two jobs, one bike, no car. I stopped in February for exactly this reason and the thing I wish I had done is kept the routine that was free.

I let everything go at once — the medicine, the walking, the Sunday cooking, the check-ins here — because it all felt like part of the same project and the project had ended. It had not. The walking was free. The cooking was cheaper than not cooking. Losing those cost me more of the winter than losing the prescription did.

51me too 12

IzzyWatford, UK

Between doses, between jobs, between plans. I stopped for money in early spring and came back much later, and the only thing I would add to Sadie is: stay in the room.

I left. Deleted the app off my phone, stopped reading, on the grounds that it would be painful to watch everyone else carrying on. Eight months of not talking to anybody about it and it was much lonelier than it needed to be.

48me too 14

RowanInverness, UK

Rural, four hours from the nearest prescriber, so a different flavour of the same problem — mine is travel cost as much as the medicine.

One small practical: ask your prescriber to write down what you were on and what happened, and get a copy for yourself. When I restarted, having a clear record meant we picked up a conversation rather than starting one, and that saved me an appointment I could not have afforded.

39me too 6

ZoëHackney, UK

Right. Mo, I will put the letter in the appeals circle at the weekend, with the bits blanked out. I had not asked again since March and it genuinely had not occurred to me that the hours thing changes anything.

Baseline page started. Walking is staying. Not leaving the room this time — Izzy, thank you for that one specifically, I was about three days from deleting the app for the same reason.

45me too 5

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