What are puberty blockers and do they really just pause puberty?

Detransitioners describe puberty blockers (such as Lupron) not as a harmless “pause button,” but as a drug originally used for chemical castration in convicted pedophiles and for treating precocious puberty in very young children. They emphasize that the medication does not simply delay puberty—it permanently deletes the developmental time that would have occurred during the natural puberty window. Once that window passes while on blockers, the body cannot fully resume or “catch up” on the lost growth, bone accrual, brain maturation, or sexual development.

Multiple accounts stress that the lost years are gone forever: genital tissue remains under-developed, bone density fails to reach normal levels, and neurodevelopment is disrupted. They also note that, in practice, virtually no one stops blockers to allow natural puberty to restart; instead, patients almost always proceed directly to cross-sex hormones, making the idea of a fully reversible pause largely theoretical. Overall, detransitioners characterize the claim that blockers are a safe, fully reversible pause as medically unsupported and dangerously misleading.