Staying on a lower dose for eight months and being fine

Started 15 June 2025 · 13 replies · 130 hearts · read 2.2k times

DoraUtrecht, NL · 15 June 2025

about a year ago

Starting a thread on this because it keeps coming up in ones and twos: Staying on a lower dose for eight months and being fine

Long one, sorry. I have been chewing on this for a fortnight.

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

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

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.

Not looking for a plan. Just company and whatever anyone has found.

BrammyBelfast, NI

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.

FlorrieBlackburn, UK

the opening post said something I want to sit with for a second.

Different experience here, for balance. Mine did not improve and in the end I stopped, and that was the right call for me. Both outcomes exist.

10me too 4

GwendaEbbw Vale, UK

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.

TomásFacilitatorLisbon, Portugal

I want to slow this down a little. There are four different answers flying about and they are all somebody's real experience, which makes them true and not necessarily relevant to the person who asked.

BevanSwansea, UK

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

Mine lasted about seven weeks and then lifted over a few days. I cannot tell you why. I can tell you it lifted.

7me too 8

HeddaCopenhagen, DK

Yes. All of this. I had the same in my third month and I remember thinking there was something specifically wrong with me, which there was not.

BroganCumbernauld, UK

I have been in this circle a year and this question comes round every few months. It is not a silly question. It is the question.

HalCambridge, UK

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

Similar here, and mine turned out to be a completely unrelated deficiency picked up on bloods.

IdrisCardiff, UK

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

I asked my nurse the same question and she said something I have repeated ever since: that the aim is to keep you on treatment, not to get you up the schedule.

GwennoPwllheli, UK

#10

Please do not read the comments under news articles about this. I lost a fortnight to that.

DoraUtrecht, NL

#11

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

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

TomásFacilitatorLisbon, Portugal

#12

I will leave this open for a few more days and then add it to the circle's resources, because the answers here are better than anything I would have written.

17me too 7

FlorrieBlackburn, UK

#13

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