When you've stopped again

You had the conversation, you set up the hook, it worked for six weeks, and then a bad month came and the organiser has been full since the tenth. Or you never quite had the conversation, you just started taking them again, and now you've stopped again and you're back where the book found you.

The first thing is the safety line from the preface. If it's been more than a few days, ring a pharmacist before you restart. For most medicines they'll say just start again, and the call took a minute. For the few where a restart is done differently, the call is what prevents the problem.

The second thing is the map. A lapse you tell the prescriber about is a data point. A lapse you hide is another five months of wrong appointments. The sentence is the same as in chapter 20 and it's no harder the second time. "I stopped again in August." That's all.

The third thing is to look at which belief did it, because the lapse nearly always has one behind it. If you stopped because you felt fine, that's chapter 4 and the answer is a number, not a feeling. If you stopped because you felt better, that's chapter 3 and the question is whether this is one of the holding ones. If it was side effects, that's a conversation you've probably still not had, and a tablet you've probably not been offered. If it faded, the hook failed, and the fix is a different hook or a more visible packet, not a firmer resolution.

What a lapse doesn't mean is that you're the kind of person who can't take tablets. The kind of person who can't take tablets is most people, half the time, and the studies say so. The people who look good at it have a hook and a pharmacist they talk to. Those are things you set up, not things you are, and both can be set up again on a Tuesday.