Posted by Carol S on March 31, 2007, at 10:21:24
In reply to Re: abilify--what's the skinny?, posted by Sebastian on March 31, 2007, at 5:14:46
Thank you all very much. I'm not really sure why my doc wants to switch me to abilify--it's her flavor of the month drug, I think. I realize it's classed as an anti-psychotic, but my doc seems to be prescribing it as a mood stabilizer and for general depression, which is why she prescribed me lamictal in the first place. I'm not bi-polar (though I have a hard time convincing my doc of that), but lamictal did wonders for my depression. Best drug I've ever been on. I'm wanting to go off of it only because it's caused me to stop menstruating (I've written about that here before), and, since I'm not in menopause, or even perimenopause, and have had complete gynecological and endocrinological work-ups to determine other possible reasons my periods might have stopped--every friggin' test known to gland-and-hormone-kind--the correlation betw. the onset of my taking lamictal and the cessation of my periods has to be more than just coincidence, since nothing else is wrong. I've learned from others on this site and elsewhere that lamictal can indeed mess w/ the girly hormones. So, I'm trying to find something else and get my cycle going again, because artificially-induced premature menopause has some nasty side effects of its own--weight gain among them. I actually do quite well on good ol' SSRIS, but, as is everyone, I am still in search of the magic one that won't make me gain weight. I'm thinking lexapro, though, as always, I read over and over again that while some lose on lex., others gain. Wellbutrin made me feel like I was on speed, and I did lose a lot of weight on that, but I never slept and it didn't help me that much either. Probably because it works on dopamine more than serotonin, from what I understand.
For the person (Sebastian) who is taking Abilify (or anyone else for that matter), are you taking it as either a basic mood-stabilizer or anti-depressant? Does is make you super ramped up in a way that causes insomnia? Lamictal actually ramped me up at first, but not in a bad way--in kind of a fun, hypomanic way that eventually evened out. And if anyone has any new opinions on SSRIS that are weight-neutral or better, I'd always be glad to learn. Some day, they've got to find one.
Again, thanks for sharing the knowledge.
Carol
poster:Carol S
thread:745533
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070327/msgs/745713.html