Tapering versus stopping — what my clinic offered

Started 28 April 2025 · 18 replies · 189 hearts · read 1.8k times

GudrunAkureyri, IS · 28 April 2025

about a year ago

Starting a thread on this because it keeps coming up in ones and twos: Tapering versus stopping — what my clinic offered

Writing this partly to ask and partly because writing it down usually tells me what I think.

What I keep tripping on is not the physical bit. It is the not knowing whether what I am experiencing is normal, and having nobody to ask who is not either selling something or frightened for me.

What I would find most useful is not advice. It is somebody describing what their version of this was, and how long it went on for.

My prescriber has been fine, genuinely. The problem is that I get nine minutes twice a year and there is no version of nine minutes that covers this.

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

GabePhoenix, AZ

I would take that to a clinician rather than to us, and I would do it this week. Not because it is definitely serious — because it is the sort of thing that is much easier to rule out than to worry about.

BryonyMalvern, UK

Two things that helped me, neither of them clever: small amounts more often, and drinking a lot more than felt necessary.

IdaRotterdam, NL

The phrase that unlocked my appointment was asking what specifically she wanted me to watch for. It moved us from reassurance to a plan in about thirty seconds.

BenediktFacilitatorVienna, Austria

Thank you for writing this. I am not going to add information to it. I am going to say that what you have described is very common and very rarely said out loud.

DelythBala, UK

I keep a two-line diary and it is the only reason I could answer this question about myself. Worth starting even now.

Birdie BWhitstable, UK

No advice, just recognition. That sounds exhausting and I am sorry you are in it.

TanviMumbai, IN

My pharmacist was more use than anyone. Ten minutes at the counter, no appointment, no charge.

TressaSt Austell, UK

the reply above said something I want to sit with for a second.

Can I gently push back on one thing? Not the substance, just the framing — you have written twice that you should be coping better. Who told you that?

8me too 8

NikoTbilisi, GE

What helped was lowering my own expectations of the week rather than trying to hold the week together.

BronLincoln, UK

#10

My experience was very boring, which I offer as data. Some of us just get a dull time of it.

9me too 9

DashSeattle, WA

#11

It got worse before it got better for me, which I wish someone had said. About ten days of worse.

TedIpswich, UK

#12

For what it is worth, the trial data on this is thinner than the confidence of the internet would suggest. Worth knowing when you read the posts.

FabianBasel, CH

#13

Have you got anyone who can be with you when you do it? It made an enormous difference to me and I felt silly asking.

SinéadCork, IE

#14

Building on what the reply above wrote rather than answering the original question.

The thing that changed it for me was going slower, agreed with my prescriber. I am not suggesting you do that. I am saying the conversation exists.

13me too 7

FenEly, UK

#15

the reply above — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.

I did exactly the same and felt terrible about it. You have not done anything wrong.

BramwellRipon, UK

#16

Practical, boring answer: write the three questions down before you go in. I have never once remembered them otherwise.

BenediktFacilitatorVienna, Austria

#17

Gently: you have apologised three times in a post where you have done nothing that requires an apology.

GudrunAkureyri, IS

#18

I am the person who had the frightening version of this. I went in, it was investigated, and it was not what anyone feared. Going in is the whole of my advice.