Psycho-Babble Medication | about biological treatments | Framed
This thread | Show all | Post follow-up | Start new thread | List of forums | Search | FAQ

Re: ocd, antipsychotics... » med_empowered

Posted by Kimbersaur on September 21, 2008, at 21:34:49

In reply to ocd, antipsychotics..., posted by med_empowered on September 21, 2008, at 20:20:29

> hey. The thing about antipsychotics for ocd-type symptoms is...its not really a sure-fire deal. Sometimes symptoms get better or more tolerable; other times, antipsychotics can make OCD worse (or actually induce OCD--its happened with zyprexa, apparently).
>
> How much worse are you thoughts now versus before abilify or early on during abilify treatment? Abilify makes some people more agitated than they were before treatment--in addition to akathisia, the partial dopamine agonism seems to make some people crazy.

Well when I first started taking the Abilify the thoughts weren't a huge problem and the Abilify didn't make any noticeable difference. It did (and continues to) help with the contamination OCD somewhat, but mostly it has had the pleasant effect of raising my moods and productivity. The intrusive thoughts now are worse than they were before I started the Abilify, although my stress level is slightly worse as well.

> Have you tried other meds, like benzos, stimulants, TCAs, etc.? I'm just asking because antipsychotics aren't really first line for OCD-type probs, and there are lots of meds out there that are safer, cheaper, and have more data behind them. There's also talk therapy and self-help and nutritional methods that you could explore.

I've tried many SSRI's and SNRI's - all of them had sexual side effects (one's that are intolerable for me). I tried Anafranil but a million side effects hit me like a ton of bricks and I had to stop after just a few days. I do take inositol (a supplement) but it doesn't do a whole lot for me and I've made an appointment with a therapist. I may just try Cymbalta next time (it really helped my OCD), with Wellbutrin for the side effects.

> One thought...I think Abilify takes about 2 weeks to reach a steady state in the blood stream; the effects you see after that time might be a better indication of how Abilify is going to work for you than the very early part of treatment. Also, if you're a slow metabolizer, your low abilify dose could be building up (thanks to the long half life of abilify)..there are a couple reports online of people getting toxic blood levels of abilify off of therapeutic doses b/c of slow drug metabolism......
>
> apparently, since abilify is relatively free of EPS and other obvious side effects usually associated with antipsychotics, you can get high blood levels and not even know it.

So the fact that the worse thoughts didn't kick in for two weeks does not negate the possibility that it is the Abilify causing them? That's very interesting! That's exactly what I wanted to know. I also have another possible side effect (digestive) that didn't kick in for a week so I thought it must be something else. Thanks for the info.

> Good luck!

Thank you so much!


Share
Tweet  

Thread

 

Post a new follow-up

Your message only Include above post


Notify the administrators

They will then review this post with the posting guidelines in mind.

To contact them about something other than this post, please use this form instead.

 

Start a new thread

 
Google
dr-bob.org www
Search options and examples
[amazon] for
in

This thread | Show all | Post follow-up | Start new thread | FAQ
Psycho-Babble Medication | Framed

poster:Kimbersaur thread:853283
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20080915/msgs/853330.html