Friends who have gone strange about it

Started 18 May 2026 · 14 replies · 85 hearts · read 1.6k times

OmarAmman, JO · 18 May 2026

2 months ago

Starting a thread on this because it keeps coming up in ones and twos: Friends who have gone strange about it

Practical question, and possibly a silly one.

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.

Here is where I am. The medication side has been more or less as described, and the part nobody prepared me for is everything around it: what to say to people, how to plan a week, and how to tell the difference between a thing to endure and a thing to raise.

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.

I will report back either way, because I have been helped by other people's follow-ups more than by their questions.

OzrenZagreb, HR

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.

MapleToronto, CA

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.

6me too 2

RufusGuildford, UK

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

WrenFacilitatorLeeds, UK

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

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.

NolwennRennes, FR

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

7me too 6

RuaridhFort William, UK

Gently disagreeing with the reply above, or rather adding the other half of it.

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?

TeganNewport, UK

What the reply above described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

Yes to the burping. It is real, it is unbeautiful, and it does settle.

ObiLagos, NG

I am about four months behind you and I have been dreading exactly this, so thank you for writing it down before I got there.

NikitaYerevan, AM

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.

OssieWolverhampton, UK

#10

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

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

BessLouth, UK

#11

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

OmarAmman, JO

#12

Reading the reply above, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

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.

WrenFacilitatorLeeds, UK

#13

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

Noticing out loud that this conversation has drifted into comparison. That happens without anyone intending it and it does not help anyone. Let us come back to the person who asked.

MapleToronto, CA

#14

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.