Seroquel

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So in the past Ive been on and off meds, SSRIs, Wellbutrin and Abilify. Ive really gone back and forth between if I need meds or not. Ive found that most meds arent affective with me, the only 1 has been Abilify. It successfully treated my depression but not my anxiety. Anxiety has always been a huge problem for me, so a psych decided try seroquel. I tried taking the 50mg at night and oh boy I was very tired the next day, drank 3 cups of coffee to combat the tiredness and almost didnt go to work that day. I could feel a noticeable affect of calmness over me which I all wanted to do was chill and sleep. That night I didnt take take it cause I had an exam the next day. I notice the effects of being on and off of it. Last night, I took 25mg so the side effects wouldnt be as bad.

Its weird how well anti-psychotics work for me. I could feel the effects on Abilify instantly when I was on it, but it didnt help as much with anxiety. So far Seroquel is helping calm down my racing obsessive thinking. I tend to dwell on my problems too much to the point where I cant rest. So far thumbs up as long as this sleepy side effect doesnt last. The doc said, it should decrease within a week or 2.

So id like to hear any other seroquel experiences...the good, the bad, the ugly.

Edit #1: A couple days later: So far Ive been halving the 50mg pill and like my psych told me, the 25mg doesnt last the whole day. I will last probably round 14 hrs and when the sleepyness wears off the effects of the meds wear off too. Im still a bit cautious about immediately going to 50mg cause I work later in the day, I dont want to walk around tired as hell. The sleepyness got a tad better the next night. I particularly strange side effect for me is a tapering of my appetite. I dont feel like eating as much at one setting yet I wanna eat small amounts more frequently. But i have a strange stomach.

Last edited by Ai_Ling on 15 Aug 2011, 2:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

Low doses of sequel are more sedating for most people than ability. I've heard of people (and know one IRL) that found 12.5mgs to be all they needed (keep in mind the maximum safe dosage is 100 times that). If racing obsessive thinking remains a problem ask your doctor if risperdal or invega might work. Those tend to get used a lot of autism. I personally liked how invega helped me organize my thought process better but I needed something a little sedating to sleep.

They gave me Seroquel in the hospital one night and it was terrible. I had lucid dreams from which I couldn't awaken and which seemed more real than the reality around me, which itself seemed like a dream. I refused to take it again, so they've had me on Ativan and Ambien for racing thoughts at night, with good results. So for me, I'd have to say Seroquel had only a negative effect. But like any other psych drug, YMMV.

I took Abilify and it worked great for my depression but not for anxiety. I went off Abilify to try Seroquel. It worked very well for my anxiety, but I became depressed again. Last week my doctor put me back on 2 mg of Abilify and lowered my dose of Seroquel to 25mg. So far so good.

Yeah, the doc had told me not to cut the pill in half because its not gonna remain effective the whole day but I did anyways due to the sleepy side effects. I have a busy schedule to maintain due to work and school. Im figuring if the 25 and 50mg are already working by just taking them once then I dont have to go past 50mg. Psychs have told me, that you dont feel the full effects of meds till after u've been on them for a couple weeks. Id perfer to keep the doses very low for caution reasons.

In terms of meds, I want them to lower the obsessive racing thoughts and anxiety problems. I will think too much and ruminate too much which leads to me getting very nervous. The past ruminations are killer for me.

My concern is the flatlining of my emotions cause thats what abilify did for me. I have a feeling that seroquel will do that. But then it might be beneficial then feeling like an obsessive/anxious wreak half the time.

@CTBill: Yeah, the dreams you have the first couple weeks after you start seroquel can be pretty wild. I had some cool ones, but the one where I dreamed I was fighting a Balrog from Lord of the Rings bare handed really sucked. If that wasn't bad enough I was stuck in a state of sleep paralysis!

@Ai_Ling: Have you been screened for bipolar disorder?

No, Ive personally thought of the possibility and I dont think so but I wouldnt be completely sure. Ive seen psychs here and there and no one ever wanted to test me for bipolar. I know I have social anxiety and one doc suggested that I was borderline OCD.

I was given Seroquel and started off on 25mg. I slept 17 hours I tried again the next day and slept 15 hours, which is a bit of an improvement I guess, but as I had obligations during the weekday, that sort of sleeping wasn't tenable and so my pdoc was okay with me coming off it.

Apparently the higher you go on Seroquel, the less sedating it gets - at lower dosages, it basically works as an antihistamine - but I didn't really have the time to titrate to find out. I've been pretty lucky in that so far, I haven't needed another anti-psychotic. I'm certain that one day, I'll have to go back onto an anti-psychotic eventually.

Speaking of Abilify, I found it rather sedating when I was taking it.

My horrid experiences with it, and information from others, can be found here:

www.wrongplanet.net/postt144588.html


Experiences like these, mentioned in that thread, are the scariest of them all, in my view:

I think it should be illegal. Funny how things like cannabis are illegal, most over the world, but horrid, manufactured things like these are not just allowed but painted in a mostly positive light. The reason to this, of course, is that companies like the Swedish-British scum company AstraZeneca, who manufacture Seroquel, make big money on it, and yet more from their other "medications" that combat side-effects, along with bribed psychiatrists who lack morals and see their patients as tools in a structure to make money. In my world, they would all go to prison.

That's a negative effect? (Unless it was a nightmare.) You can learn so much from a lucid dream, in all probability, if only you explore it. Watch Waking Life, a movie. Haven't tried Seroquel, but I wish lucid dreaming could really be this easy.

In other unrelated trivial chatter, 'Seroquel' reminds me of an angel from Evangelion (whose names always end in '-el', IIRC).

@Beauty_pact I can relate to what you mean. It is such a hopeless scenario - a depressed person, possibly suicidal, and these 'doctors' simply servicing these companies who hold monopolies on desperation (who I believe really know nothing that couldn't possibly be known by working out simple logic and reading a bit. Mental conditions are flaky and their positions are untenable). Sometimes I feel like a scientologist, since they are anti-psychiatry, but I'm confident that I can back up any argument I make against this nonsense.

PS. @Ai_Ling can't you use apostrophes? Your posts are hard to read without them.

Sorry, I have a learning disorder where my spelling/grammar is pretty bad. I am extremely reliant on spell check however in chatting, forums and other forms of informal written communication, I tend to neglect spelling and grammar corrections.