I did not in fact ever figure out how to remove my prescription contacts without hurting my eye. I several times severely irritated my cornea and constantly fought dry eye. It took awhile, but I did eventually get reasonable reading glasses and adjust to wearing them at the end of the day. (At first I had terrible vertigo switching between contacts and my old eyeglasses.) I had the best quality vision of my life wearing underpowered contacts with low powered "tuners" over them, but no doctor is going to support that, and I got scared about using contacts that were not properly fitted. (Unlike glasses that just bend light, contacts can thin your cornea, scratch your cornea, or increase infection rate if not properly fitted.)
The usual reduced lens method with contacts is to wear contacts for either near or far vision and wear glasses over to get to the other focal length. I wasn't wearing contacts for vanity, but for the superior image quality you get from having more of the refraction on the surface of your eye, and there were significant cost savings if I went down 3D into the normal range lenses, so I had both reading and distance lenses to wear over.
After I gave up on contacts, I started wearing my reading glasses more and more. I test ok at the Snellen chart in them, so I'm even legal to drive in them. I don't have 20/20 vision, but I can see a squirrel on the road, I can definitely see a child or a car. Eventually my full prescription lenses got a scratch in an annoying spot and I stopped using them.
My vertigo is improved, my headaches are gone, my myopia has stopped progressing, my anxiety about worsening vision or breaking my glasses is improved. When I do need new glasses I can just order them. Have I seen regression? No. Is it still totally worth it? Yes.
I did a lot of research while not improving. (Some would say all that reading is why I didn't improve). I really didn't find anyone making credible large reduction to their axial length (the physical length of the eye is the primary cause of myopia), nor even refractive changes after growth was completed. I did find very solid evidence that using glasses with a reduced focal length improved the function of the ciliary muscle and increased the thickness of the choroidal tissue in the eye. Secondary effects were not studied, but the biomechanics suggest that this could improve eye health and reduce long term risk factors that high myopes face. It's no guarantee, and not likely to be proven in my lifetime, but since it helps me in the short term it's good to know it might also be positive in the long term.
