Posted by utopizen on January 31, 2004, at 0:46:36
In reply to Re: Abilify questions, posted by Lazarus on January 28, 2004, at 20:01:09
> I take Abilify, 2.5 to 3.75 mg daily. It is stimulating. It is also a very powerful antipsychotic; it affects my ability to read and speak. However, it does an excellent job of suppressing emotional responses when faced with stressful situations.
>
> Lazarus
>Wow. I took it for social anxiety disorder, and my doc wanted me to start at 7.5mg for a month before taking 15mg. I was super tired after 20 minutes of taking it the first night, then the third night I was so energized or something I had to take it in the AM. Two weeks later I got restlessness, and just stopped.
Now I have narcolepsy, and wonder if it would help me... but can't try it now, my stimulant meds are too high to let it play around with my blood pressure. The days of casually taking Adderall IR 20mg 2x/day are long gone for me... by that I mean like a year ago, but oh well.
I remember I was in the library and in "study" mode with it, I would really make sure to do my work while taking my Adderall, despite the fact that I was actually connecting any changes in my social anxiety alone to the drug, not ADD.
But in retrospect, I wonder if it made me less lazy with my pathetic time management skills that I continue to have as a junior. Or more awake? I'm not sure how more tired I am now than when I was a year ago, but at some point I realized it wasn't bearable to feel as tired as I do.
Then again, now I also just get super tired if I do try to do work at the library, so it's kind of depressing in a 2-minute kind of way (I never had depression).
It can make you tired, but for me it seemed more energized. I was at the library on a Saturday morning! And most people don't get weight gain, but antipsychotics tend to normalize you, and in my case I did get hungry more-- which I need, I'm scrony.
Ha! Docs always are tricky with dosing antipsychotics. When Abilify caused restlessness, he switched me to a "low dose" of Risperdal, .5mg 3x/day. Made me so sedated, 18 hours of sleep/day, I ended it in three days. I've tried so many drugs, and I'd like to know specifically when I got so tired and why... like if a drug made me more tired, why I have less energy than I did back just a school year ago, etc.
Docs always say "low dose" antipsychotic, and that's just a thing to calm you down about the drug class. Yes, people with schitozphrenia need more, but do I really need .5mg of Risperdal 3x/day? Took me 3 days to not take that any longer...
poster:utopizen
thread:306574
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040127/msgs/307605.html