Amazing the medicines that are "intended" for temporary use that we find ourselves on for years. I'm in the process of weaning myself from an HRT combination medication I was using. My last Rx was refused from the mail order pharmacy; it turns out that the FDA is starting to clamp down on drug companies putting out medications for uses they weren't tested for. Mine is one of those. I'd been planning to change meds anyway, but this was the factor than made the time be now.

I hit a wall when I tried to simply stop taking it. I was buying a full strength dose that I cut in half (to save money) and dropping it felt bad, something I hadn't expected. It was an exhausting and frustrating experience. I've cut my dose in half and just this week I'm stretching it out (the 1/4 tablet) from every 24-hours to 36; I don't want to try cutting the pill any more, so I'll stretch out the time instead, and have a chart. I expect that after another three weeks I'll be down to 1/4 every 48 hours, and from there, I'll see how it goes.

The fact that this is occurring is troubling. I take HRT to prevent osteoporosis (my mom had it) but I want as low a dose of estrogen as possible because she died of breast cancer. I'm going to be looking into alternate methods (non Rx herbal, and dietary approaches) to retain calcium. Some of those drugs for retaining or building calcium do more harm than good.

SRS