Posted by Christ_empowered on August 12, 2011, at 13:12:29
In reply to Abilify: many questions, posted by Zonked on August 12, 2011, at 10:29:27
Abiify never gave me akathisia. I did get akathisia on low doses of other atypicals, though. Abilify also never struck me as particularly stimulating; I could think a bit more clearly, but its definitely a tranquilizer.
I was on 30, now I'm taking 15. I had a mild stiff gait for a while; that went away once I started taking lots of supplements. Maybe its the antioxidants, maybe its a placebo effect, maybe my body adjusted to the Abilify. I don't know.
When I was younger, higher doses gave me a tremor. This is relatively uncommon, and part of it may have been that I was still a teenager, and teenagers are more sensitive to EPS than adults. I was also neuroleptic-naive, and patients who haven't been treated with neuroleptics before tend to show more side-effects, even at lower doses.
Supposedly, the higher you go the less akathisia you have. That's what my ex-shrink said. Doesn't sound like the greatest idea to me, but it would explain why the Abilify people recommended (and I think still recommend) 15mgs/day as the starting and target dose; that extra 5mgs over the 10mgs dose (which has been shown effective in studies) might calm people down a little bit, reducing start up agitation and perhaps akathisia.
From what I've read, some of the "akathisia" that people get on low dose Abilify is start up agitation/stimulation. Benzos can help.
I don't know about brain shrinkage, but rats exposed to Abilify have less D2 upregulation that those exposed to Haloperidol. Zyprexa, from what I've read, causes about the same amount of D2 upregulation as standard dose haldol.
poster:Christ_empowered
thread:993536
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20110809/msgs/993544.html