Posted by PsychoSally on February 27, 2009, at 17:25:04
In reply to Re: seroquel withdrawal syndromes?, posted by Stina on June 12, 2004, at 0:52:28
I know this thread has been dead for a long time, but I am coming off of Seroquel and this was one of the first pages that came up.
That said I wanted to post my experience for anyone else who came across it.
I'm on 100mg Lamictal 2x a day, 300mg Wellbutrin in the morning, and 30 mg Lexapro at night.
I had been placed on Seroquel and I hated it from the beginning. I had been placed on it to replace my Risperdal which didn't really do much for me and the side effect of lactation was just gross. So anyway, back onto the Seroquel. My doctor upped me from 25 mg all the way up to 200 mg at my highest point. Initially Seroquel made me exhausted, and it was increased to help me sleep better at night. It just made me more tired. My doctor said if she continued to up it, it would eventually make me less tired. Lies. I continued to sleep 10-12 hours a night and was exhausted all day. I couldn't wake up earlier and stay awake without at least 600 mg of caffeine total in a day. I began to taper off because at it's highest Seroquel had kept making my dreams more vivid and at 200mg I began to not be able to tell what was reality or a dream. My dreams were so realistic, I would think that they actually happened, and it was a really disturbing time talking to people about activities that we didn't do together, or forgetting to go grocery shopping because I already thought I did it.
I've been tapering down from 200mg over a 3 week period if not less I'd say. At first I understood that the symptoms I was experiencing were withdrawal, but then I continued to lose touch with myself until I thought that I was going crazy. I only have GAD and major depressive disorder as well as severe panic attacks, so the feeling of disembodiment and psychotic like feelings were very frightening. I've begun to have mild hallucinations, a disconnection from self, severe exhaustion, migraines, nausea, fainting, shaking hands, shaking chills, and rapid fluctuations in temperature, meaning I am either freezing or boiling hot. My mental state is very odd, I just feel apathetically depressed. I've felt that before, but not in this way. It's as if you took that hyper manic feeling right as a panic attack hits its peak and somehow, like slowing down the pace of a song, stretched it out so much so that you can't even call it panic. It's just this sickening calm sarcastic disgust and you're so bitter and outside of yourself that you feel like your drowning in water. It's like no matter what you do you're just a passenger in this car called the purgatory that is rock bottom, and you can't get out of the car or control where you're going. You don't know where the destination is, or what's behind these feelings, you're just stuck and all you know is that whoevers taken over this car can't be you because this kind of darkness isn't depression, it's just pure darkness, the darkness behind insanity. I've come off of Zoloft, Buspar, Paxil, Lithium, and even illegal drugs like white and xtc when I was younger and never have I had withdrawal like this. I hope the makers of Seroquel rot in heck. I hope my post helps someone, somewhere, because at least that'll bring some light into this macabre freakshow I'm going through.
Sorry for the rant and thank you, to all who read this.
poster:PsychoSally
thread:84158
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090223/msgs/882869.html