SEROQUEL (Quetiapine fumarate)

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I was on it at a very low dose around 50 i think,
my doctor tells me that you start off waning yourself onto it into much bigger doses, i think
the last time I took it was a dose of 200mg or something,
definately helped with the insomnia but the initial tiredness side effect throughout the day was a pain,
it was supposed to go away after 2-3 weeks, after 5-6 it still didn't so i thought it wasn't worth it,
the way i see it is if i take just my anti depressants i am happier and ignore, don't care and don't notice psychotic
symptoms, and if your happier you would be more motivated therefore easier to get to sleep

I had this with Abilify. I couldnt keep my legs still - even when i stopped taking it the effects lasted for days. Had to kind of dance / jig non stop and sleeping was very difficult. I wanted to try it because all the other anti-psychotics i'd tried made me gain weight or have sore joints (including seroquel). I don't think they're suitable for ASDs.

Erm, let's see... Seroquel. Yes, I did take it. Let me just say it worked okay (and worked well knocking me out, too )... but it had some SEVERE side effects. It put me in a state of severe anxiety attacks, basically to the point I was having seizures on two separate occasions (when mixed with my other meds and lack of sleep and stress). Went to the hospital twice, brother found me on the floor one morning twitching while seizing and banging my head against the walls/door. :S

I researched it a bit more and found that my case may have been a situation of serotonin syndrome, since my symptoms matched it almost identically. The hospital diagnosed it as severe anxiety attacks and put me on lorazepam. I still take Lorazepam now (it works really well).

Is your subconscious trying to tell you something?

I have been taking Seroquel for about six weeks (since June 14). Overall, I am getting good results with it. My doctor started me on 25 mg/day, and now I am taking 100 mg/day. I don't know if the dose will increase from there, but she was suggesting it could go up to 300 or 400 mg/day, depending on what I need.

I should be clear about this: my doctor has prescribed Seroquel for my bipolar disorder type II, not for Asperger's. I don't know how much of a difference that makes for the person getting the treatment, but it seems important for me to mention it.

The medication is very sedating, but that seems to get more manageable after a few days. Of course, we're still in the early stages of determining the correct dosage, so I am getting some small increases in the daily dose and that brings on more of the sleepiness. However, I take it at night and that helps me sleep better (except for the rare days like today, when I am choosing to stay up very late). I can take the other portion of the dose during the day and have no sleepiness or other side-effects.

As far as Seroquel's "slowing down" my brain, it does seem to do that and I like it! I'm not losing any creativity or optimism or ability to think as clearly and as sharply as ever. What is quietening are the zillions of rapid-fire thoughts that manifest as what one friend called "cerebral popcorn." To me, that slowing down the rate of mental processing is a blessing and I am first now really starting to enjoy it.

I can appreciate the concern about losing one's edge or creative spark if the mind slows down somewhat. My work is interesting to me: I'm a lawyer, businessman, and writer. Good thought processes are very important!

However--and I hope this offers some hope and reassurance--it was after I had been taking Seroquel for a few weeks that I developed a solution to a legal research problem that had been daunting me for at least a month. (The issue was how to organize hundreds of citations to court decisions and scholarly articles to make them more readily accessible when I would be ready to write about them.) One afternoon, I was feeling calm--with my somewhat-slowed mind--and the solution was right there; it seemed so obvious once I discovered it!

It's important to learn about the potential side-effects and drug interactions with any new medicine we put into our bodies. At the same time, at least for me, it's essential not to become obsessed about side effects or focus on one or two particular effects and start to convince myself that they will inevitably happen to me. I know the power of the mind and auto-suggestion, so I'm very careful to learn the basics of potential problems I should watch for, and then let go of the matter and allow the medication to do its work.

I also try to avoid attaching too much importance to the names of the categories to which these various medications belong. For example, Seroquel is classified as an atypical anti-psychotic. That one word, "psychotic," really freaks me out sometimes because of the extensive history of mental illnesses in my maternal extended family. So I have developed a little mental game to get past all that.

When I start obsessing or worrying about the terms, "psychotic" and "anti-psychotic," I just tell myself, "Forget all this negative labeling! I'm going to call Seroquel my 'peanut-butter-and-jelly medication,' since it will help me appreciate the taste of food more."

Maybe that seems silly, but it works for me. I respectfully invite you to try some techniques like that, maybe some out-of-the-box thinking, to lessen some of the angst that might surround taking Seroquel or any other of the members of the class of medications to which it belongs.

Me, I just want to get well. I told my doctor, "Hey, if it works, I don't care if you call it 'X-Y-Z banana pudding'; just give me some relief!" She laughed about that and agreed with my sentiments.

I've learned that I can't control other's reactions when they learn I am taking a particular medication or any prejudices they may superimpose on their views of me. That's outside my sphere of influence, so I let go of it. One of my other medications is lithium carbonate (I take it as a mood stabilizer and to help the antidepressants work better). To me, it's just part of my medical treatment--no big deal.

About two years ago, I was accompanying my uncle to an appointment with his doctor. My uncle has been disabled from schizophrenia all of my lifetime and he doesn't comply with medication, psychotherapy, follow-up doctor visits, support groups, and so on. It's "not his thing," as he puts it. Well, when I told him I was taking lithium carbonate, he freaked out and said, "Whoa! That's what they put the really crazy people on!"

I just groaned or sighed; I don't remember exactly what sounds I made, but they were nonverbal! I was utterly speechless. I tried to think of some reasonable reply that would let us have a conversation, but my mind was blank. It was one of two or three experiences in my life where I noticed all thoughts had ceased, it felt like someone had pressed some "reset" button in my head, and I had to wait for the brain and all the neural connections to reboot, like a computer system.

Looking back, I guess I had hoped that my uncle, of all people, with his experiences in various mental health treatment facilities and with numerous doctors, would have been more sympathetic to the medications I was taking and my illness. But no, he had to go ahead and use the "c" word. Argh!

I mention all of this to emphasize that I've learned I can't control people's reactions to my medical conditions and the treatments I am receiving for them. Happily, my family is understanding and very supportive--a veritable rock of sanity for me--and I do have several very close friends who know about my condition and are with me every step of the way.

I hope you will have a good experience with Seroquel and any other medications you might take.

Be well.

I was prescribed Seroquel during my time at the psych ward for depression, for the sole reason that the antidepressant I was given made it pretty much impossible to sleep. Since that wasn't even enough, they tossed in an anxiolytic (anxiety medication; Klonazepam) to see if it would help, and if it would reduce my anxiety around others (which it completely failed to do). This is why I hate the concept of medication. The need to take more kinds to counteract the effects of the first medication. I don't need to get into more details of where medication only screwed me up more...

In it's primary purpose, it does a really good job at knocking you out. Really effective. Don't take it until you're planning to go to sleep in the next half hour. Ticked me off when I took it and it wouldn't let me do something else because of extreme tiredness. I didn't experience additional jittery-ness, though I'd had nervous energy like that most (if not all) of my life, so no difference was made there. As for weight gain, one person I knew gained 72 pounds off the stuff. As far as I know she didn't have the best eating habits anyways, but it can screw with your metabolism. After two and a half months of taking it (at about 300mg, I think), I haven't noticeably gained weight, but I've also been running over a mile every other morning or so.

The stuff's kind of expensive, too.

Nice seeing this topic, since yesterday was actually the first day I was given the OK by my psychiatrist to go without it. (as well as the anxiolytic.)

uhm, i took it in the mental hospital after i was perscibed respidal. and it made me sleep for days thats when i was all like "never again" we parted and i havent been a perscriber since. in all honesty i'd rather suffer than have side effects like that

Did he have your medical file in front of him?
Did he sound like he had an idea about your past medical history?
Some doctors will pre-read about a new patient, some will sort of read while the new patient is there.. or ask a bunch of questions they could have already found out by reading the records.. wasting valuable one-on-one time..

In your post I marked two things that bother me about doctors.
They may not know you, yet they change/switch/increase or add a new medication.

Like this new doc of yours..

Lots of drugs - psych. drugs, non-psych. drugs, OTC drugs - have several uses, and Seroquel shares that quality. As mentioned earlier it can be used as a mood stabiliser, anti-psychotic and a sleep aid as it can be fairly sedating at lower levels. It gets more sedating at higher levels, though. Anyways, just because one of its purposes is as a anti-psychotic doesn't mean you have psychosis; it's just one of the functions of the drug.

RE: Akathesia. I would be very surprised if someone had akathesia on a low dosage of Seroquel, considering its sedating qualities.

I'm not quite sure why Abilify got mentioned in the thread as well because it's a different anti-psychotic in the first place. Not all anti-psychotics are the same; to think otherwise is misinformed fearmongering.

I was put on seroquel xr because i was having mood swings where i would be happy one moment and sobbing the next. It made me really tired, but i didn't mind. After 2 weeks I had to stop the meds abruptly due to swallowing problems. My doctor thought it might be a rare side effect, but think it is just my acid reflux. I hope i go back on it soon because I am having really bad insomnia and my mood swings are starting again.

Was recently put on this medication. For the first 4 days (25mg in morning, 50mg at night) i was falling asleep for extended periods of time during the day and eating a lot of sweet foods. The next 4 days (50mg in the morning 75mg at night) it got worse, i felt like my mind was clouded and i was very tired. I got it sorted out with the doc and im now taking 200mg at night to make me sleep and 50mg in the morning. Should also add im taking this for depression and that im taking 80mg of strattera for ADHD. Anyone notice a difference in aspergers behaviours?? i find social situations less pressuring, maybe this is just the absence of depression

I took this for years and it helped me with severe insomnia. Sadly it did have disruptive side effects which are fine if all you need to do is sleep. I couldnt drive on it, it made me sleep for 16 hours a day on low doses, my brain functioning slowed considerably and I had quite bad memory problems that have never quite recovered.

It is used in bipolars who have unresponsive depression as well as schizophrenics who have a mixture of positive and negative symptoms. It has various other unlicensed/off label uses such as for sleep disorders and anxiety.

I really would phone your doc up first thing and ask why you have been prescribed it.

Being on the autistic spectrum cant be fixed by medication, so if thats their reasoning question it. If its to get a good sleep, enjoy it!

All atypical antipsychotics(Zyprexa/Seroquel/Abilify/Risperdal/Invega/Geodon/Clozaril) have the unwanted side effect of weight gain but they also act on other neurotransmitters as well - which can explain their serious side effects as well!

Zyprexa is the worst of them, followed by Clozaril. Symbiax is a combo of Prozac/Zyprexa in 1 dose.