A lot said here about fading, which is a good way for some to leave the cult under their particular circumstances.
My departure involved a 'fade' period of less than two years, pretty fast considering I went from being a locally prominent elder to being DF'd for apostasy within that time period.
Because my 'fall' was pretty swift and prominent, I was approached during the 'fade' ('79-'81) in one-on-one encounters by a handful of friends, mostly elders, who sincerely wanted to help me recover from my 'spiritual sickness' as they saw it. Because they were sincere in their own way and I was sincere in my way, I had an opportunity to make some very direct, heartfelt comments that had boiled up out of my deeply emotional/intellectual transition. A statement that I made on several of these occasions turned out to be prophetic. Here's an example of one of those encounters that took place within a few days of them calling me to talk the JC:
It was a Saturday afternoon and I was working in my front yard, a car pulled up and it was my old pal, David. He got out and chatted a bit with a couple of my (5) kids who were playing ball in the street. I greeted him as he walked up to me. He seemed to have tears in his eyes and I knew he was very nervous. I tried to put him at ease, I offered him a beer and we chatted briefly about this and that. Then he got down to the point of his visit "we miss you at the meetings, you know it's the truth, the time is short, you want your kids to live in the new order...etc" I responded in kind, that is, with deep sincerety and conviction. I'll never forget putting my hand on his shoulder and saying the following- "David, mark my words. The organization has painted themselves into a corner with "generation of 1914" doctrine. Sometime before 1999 (I came up with that based on the Societies current statements that a person of 'that generation' would have to be around 12 yrs old in 1914) they will come up with "new light" to get themselves more time."
Many years later in the mid '90s, after my family and I were long gone and had about a dozen Christmas trees under our belt, a friend sent me a copy of the WT wherein they double-talked their way out of the 1914 corner I had referred to those many years before. I have often wondered if any of those brothers to whom I had made that statement had thought about it on the Sunday afternoon when it was being studied in the KH.