Posted by fenix on February 1, 2006, at 13:39:47
In reply to Zyprexa vs. Seroquel, posted by Ezekial18 on February 1, 2006, at 12:58:56
> Does anyone have any thoughts about taking zyprexa instead of seroquel or vice versa? I am convinced that zyprexa makes me irritable -- I went from 20mg to 10mg and noticed an improvement but still feel consistently irritable. I went off zyprexa once before and noticed a major improvement so I am convinced that zyprexa causes me to be irritable. My doctor said she will taper me off of zyprexa if I agree to increase my seroquel. I have been on 100mg of seroquel at night for some time now. Last night I went down to 7.5mg of zyprexa and increased my seroquel to 200mg. I will do this for a week. My doctor said she will probably want to raise my seroquel to 300mg once I get down to 5mg and then 2.5mg of zyprexa. Seroquel makes me very tired, but I need help relaxing and falling asleep so it works in that respect. I worry that I am going to have an even more difficult time waking up and getting out of bed in the mornings than I already have now. And zyprexa has not been kind to my weight but I imagine it is no different than seroquel. I think I am just destined to be 100 pounds overweight. I have taken up to 600mg of seroquel at night. I am bipolar I and anxiety disorder. I also take lithium 1500mg and lamictal 200mg. I want very badly to streamline my meds and be on as little as possible. I am a recovering alcoholic and drug addict and worry about being psychologically addicted to seroquel in the sense that I feel like I won't be able to sleep if I don't take it.
Seroquel sure is sedating ain't it, way more so than zyprexa? I would go with sedation over irritability any day, so stick with seroquel if that is what you really want to do, if you are getting up too late because of it though you should tell your doctor about it.
Also consider maybe going back on zyprexa, but seeing if your doc could give you a benzodiazepine to get rid of the irritability. This way, you could take a benzo at night time, it wouldn't knock you out nearly as much as seroquel does *and* you wouldn't have irritability anymore (hopefully).
I hope this reply has been remotely helpful. And as an aside, I think they named the drug Seroquel after Seraquel, one of the christian arch-angels.
Hopefully, Seraquel isn't too pissed off about that.
poster:fenix
thread:605166
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060129/msgs/605175.html