Maintenance
Year two, year three, and the part nobody writes about.
22 conversations1.6k membersFirst Sunday of the month, 17:00 UK
Facilitator — maintenance & coming off
Benedikt
“Nobody writes about year three. We write about year three.”
The circles I hold are the ones the internet is worst at. Everything written about these medications is about starting: the first pen, the first twelve weeks, the early change. Then the writing stops, and the actual majority of your time on this — or off it — happens in the silence afterwards.
Maintenance is about that silence. What a steady year feels like. Whether appetite signals come back and in what form. How to stop measuring your life in change when there is no change, which is the point. What it is like to have this be simply a fact about your Wednesdays.
Coming-off is more delicate and I try to keep it clear-eyed. Some people stop by choice, some because of cost, some because of side effects, some because their prescriber said so. Appetite usually returns; for many people so does some of the weight, and the trial data on that is reasonably clear and worth reading rather than fearing. What I will not allow in that circle is the framing of return as failure. We have had that fight and I will have it again.
Restarting-after-a-break exists because it kept happening and nobody had a name for it. It is astonishing how much shame people carry about a restart, and how fast it goes when six other people say "yes, me, twice".
Circles Benedikt holds
Coming off
By choice, by cost, by side effect, or because your prescriber said so.
22 conversations149 membersSecond Sunday of the month, 17:00 UK
Restarting after a break
A restart is an ordinary shape. Nobody here is surprised.
19 conversations115 membersThird Sunday of the month, 17:00 UK
Recent call recaps
Nobody claps for a flat year
Maintenance
When a steady dose stops holding
Maintenance
Year two has no headlines
Maintenance
Guides Benedikt reviewed
clinical
Coming off: what to expect
Stopping is an ordinary shape, not a failure — what the withdrawal trials found, what the weeks afterwards tend to feel like, and what is worth arranging first.
eating
Alcohol: what changes
Many members find drinking changes on these medicines — less desire, worse effects, or both. What is actually known, and the safety points that are not negotiable.
living
Maintenance: the part nobody writes about
Everything published about these medicines is about starting. Then the writing stops — and the majority of your time on this happens in the silence afterwards.
practical
What goes in your fridge, and what does not
A plain guide to the shelf your medicine lives on — where the cold spots are, what does not need refrigerating at all, and how to share a fridge with other people.
practical
Pens, vials and syringes: a plain comparison
What each format actually is, what each gets right and wrong, and the one confusion — units versus milligrams — that has sent people to hospital.