Before it made me lose my mind, I loved X. Some of my happiest times were spent there: I forged lasting bonds, laughed lots and launched a new career.

In 2009, when I joined what was then known as Twitter, I was bored, working a corporate job, blogging on the side, desperate to be a writer. Twitter made that happen: I posted my writing, gradually people started reading it and eventually some of them asked me to write for them, for money. Without hyperbole, it made my professional dreams come true.

It was also huge fun. I met my best friend on Twitter, when she was pretending to be two office-working dinosaurs called Steve and Dave. That was the vibe back then: silliness, gossip and parody accounts, daft crazes and chat. It was the water cooler that my very serious workplace didn’t have.

The combination of those elements made Twitter addictive and, for well over a decade, I opened it on waking and only stopped scrolling when I went to sleep. I reasoned it was a work necessity: the place where I could post my writing and connect with professional contacts; a way of tapping into ideas and interesting happenings. But I would have been there even if it wasn’t.

Not because it was an unalloyed pleasure. Reading about so many brilliant careers gave me galloping professional insecurity and frequent Fomo (or rather, the stage beyond Fomo, when you know you are missing out because everyone is talking about something you weren’t invited to). Twitter became angrier, louder and more fractious, especially after 2016, when Brexit and Donald Trump ruined things. I skirted online aggro, but increasingly felt I was overhearing hundreds of fights a week, each one provoking a jolt of secondhand stress. It wasn’t fun any more, but I was hooked, chasing that early high, despite dramatically diminishing returns.

I would love to say I found the willpower to make a conscious decision to quit; actually, it was thanks to Elon Musk and menopause. Musk’s takeover killed any residual buzz stone dead, showing me boring or outrage-inducing stuff I had no interest in. X (ugh, that name is so embarrassing, too) became a much less addictive product – a sort of methadone Twitter.

Then perimenopause left me struggling to cope with the dizzying churn of online input. The internet claims about 6,000 tweets are posted each second and it felt as if I was seeing every single one, constantly flooded with unsolicited opinions and chatter. In real life, I hate hearing other people’s conversations when I am working – I am the earplugs, noise-cancelling-headphones type – but I was letting it happen online every day.

X became a focus for my anxiety, too: every time I opened the app (which I did mechanically, hundreds of times a day) my fingers tingled with an adrenal lurch of dread. It was once a happy place, where I would thoughtlessly post any old nonsense; now, it felt exposing and hostile. One of the last times I plucked up the courage to post (a photo of one of my hens in a tree), someone crossly asked why I hadn’t answered their email – hardly dramatic, but in my hormonally challenged state, it sent me spiralling.

Deactivating my account felt like first aid. Gradually, though, it has become a choice. Not an easy one: life without a ticker tape of rolling outrage, opinion and news is flatter. I used to feel plugged into the zeitgeist; now my answer to the “What’s happening?” question that appeared at the top of the X app is: “I have no idea.” That is tricky in my job.

I miss the people who were parasocially part of my life for 15 years, too. I kept in touch with some, either in real life or on Instagram (an app I am able to use in moderation, somehow), but working from home without a burble of virtual chatter can feel solitary.

The upside is a far quieter mind. I am not exponentially more productive, unfortunately, but I am calmer and more functional; it turns out it’s easier to focus without thousands of strangers shouting at (well, around) me.

Recently, someone messaged me, urging me to join her on one of the handful of alternative Twitter-like products; she said it was fun, like “old Twitter”. I considered it for a second. Then I realised: I am never going back.