US Brand Name: Asendin
Other Brand Names:
Amoxan (Japan)
Asendis (England; Ireland)
Defanyl (France)
Demolox (Denmark; India; Portugal; Spain)
Generic Name: amoxapine
Other Forms:
FDA Approved Uses: Neurotic or reactive depressive disorders as well as endogenous and psychotic depressions. It's approved for depression with anxiety and/or agitation.
Off-Label Uses: Panic/anxiety disorders, bulima.
Pros: It's been for awhile, so doctors are familiar with its uses and effects. It starts to work very quickly. It almost does the antipsychotic-antidepressant combo by itself the way it blocks dopamine and works on serotonin & norepinephrine.
Cons: The dopamine-blocking does expose you to the potential for Tardive Dyskinesia and Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome. See the section on antipsychotics for more information. It also carries warnings for heart weirdness, so if you have any heart issues or family history of such, an EKG is in order.
Typical Side Effects: The so-called anticholinergic typical when starting antidepressants - headache, nausea, sweating, dry mouth, sleepiness or insomnia, and diarrhea or constipation and blurry vision. If you get any, or all, of these, expect them to pass in a week or two.
Not So Common Side Effects: Urinary hesitancy (a.k.a. forgetting how to go), heart palpitations, rashes. The urinary hesitancy is something that meds that hit your norepinephrine receptors will just do randomly through the course of treatment.
These may or may not happen to you don't, so don't be surprised one way or the other.
Freaky Rare Side Effects:
Testicular swelling, painful ejaculation. This is the drug for sex addicts anonymous.You aren't going to get these. I promise.
Interesting Stuff Your Doctor Probably Won't Tell You: Asendin (amoxapine) is an odd hybrid of antidepressant and antipsychotic, so your doctor probably won't go over the whole antipsychotic drill with you.
Dosage: Initial dose is 50mg two to three times daily. After two to three weeks that may be increased to 100mg two to three times daily. Presuming this stuff works, the maintenance dose of 200-300mg may then be taken all at once at bedtime. Inpatients may receive up to 600mg a day. Yow! With all meds of this generation I honestly wouldn't trust it above the 200mg a day level unless you were really desperate, nothing else worked and this stuff does.
Days to Reach a Steady State: None is published. Based on the half-lives I'm presuming 7-8 days, if everything is nice and linear.
When you're fully saturated with the medication and less prone to peaks and valleys of effects. You still might have peaks of effect after taking many meds, but with a lot of the meds you'll have fewer valleys after this point. In theory anyway.
How Long it Takes to Work: 80% of people taking Asendin (amoxapine) report it working between 4 and 14 days.
Half-Life & Average Time to Clear Out of Your System: It does a double metabolism. The first time around is 8 hours. Then the major metabolite has a half-life of 30 hours. Expect it to clear out of your system or to be able to step down a dosage every 8 days.
If you've worked your way up to a particular dosage, it's usually best to spend this many days at the next lowest dosage before going down the next lowest dosage before that and so forth. This is the least sucky way to avoid problems when stopping any psychiatric medication. Presuming you have the option of slowly tapering off them.
| Comments: Be sure to read the sections on
antidepressants if you haven't done so already.
You should also read up on
antipsychotics as well, as Asendin
(amoxapine) is structurally similar to Loxitane
(loxapine). Approved by the FDA to treat depression in September 1980, Asendin (amoxapine) is a fast-acting med that provides moderately strong reuptake of norepinephrine and light reuptake of serotonin. It's the affinity for dopamine receptors that sets this med apart, giving it a combination of old-school antipsychotic as well as antidepressant action. The combination of the two types of medications is a potent one. So much so that Lilly is marketing one such combination of Prozac (fluoxetine) and Zyprexa (olanzapine) as an entirely new drug: Symbyax. However the concept isn't all that new, it's been around since before 1982, when Triavil / Etrafon, a combination of Trilafon (perphenazine) and Elavil (amitriptyline) were introduced. But if you've been through every possible combination of antipsychotic and antidepressant and none works for you, Asendin (amoxapine) may be what you're looking for.
|
Manufacturers: Lederle Laboratories, a subsidiary of Wyeth, pioneered brand name Asendin. Watson is one of many manufacturers of the generic form.
Sample US Cost: $83.00 for 60 50mg tablets of brand name Asendin. $65.00 for 100 50mg generic amoxapine tablets.
As of 02/28/2004. Full retail for the uninsured. Go ahead and gloat, citizens of civilized countries and all of you with full medical coverage.
Sample Canadian Cost: Ascendin is apparently no longer available in Canada.
As of 02/06/2004. In US dollars, for re-importation to the US. Does not include shipping charges or currency conversion charges you might incur on your credit card. Currency fluctuations will alter the price on a daily basis.
No Remedy Find Rating
Check for Drug-Drug Interactions
Full US Patient/Prescribing/Physician Information Sheet
Please see the section on
how to read these sheets. Don't freak out about every potential side effect. Look at the odds of something having happened during the clinical trials.
The Overlords of the 12 Zernox Galaxies have compelled me through messages in the Sunday Chronicle to beg you for spare change. So if this site has been of use and/or amusement to you, please see if you could
or visit the Donation Page if PayPal isn't your style, or our Mental Mall to make a purchase. I'm all about fiscal transparency, so follow the money for full disclosure of my pitiful finances.
Crazy Meds Home Crazy Meds Talk Support Group Sites Sites with More Information About Crazy Meds
Take care, and keep taking your crazy meds!
If you still have unanswered questions about this or other medications,
including which one is, or combination of meds are the best for you, your best
bet is to ask on Crazy
Meds Talk. Better yet, if you want to let the world know how they
worked out for you and want to help out others in their quest for the correct
meds, join the party.
If you want to discuss your issues, I suggest checking out one of
the various
support groups online.
Otherwise, if you're letting me know about how much you like or hate the site,
or need to let me know about medication effects in private, then just drop
a note to jerod23 at gmail dot com Honestly, I usually don't have a
lot of time to answer e-mail these days. The snide autoresponse
message that may or may not hit your mailbox is going to tell you the same
thing.
Another problem is that you may not get a response even if I wanted to send you
one. You see, so many dickweeds with malicious intents and too much time
on their hands have appropriated the crazymeds.org domain name to use for their
spam, viruses and the like. Subsequently some lazy-ass e-mail protection
software authors just go by the domain name, and not the IP address. So
I've been blacklisted because of the actions of others. Or the software
just doesn't like the domain name because of the "crazy" and/or "meds." Or
your question about a particular medication will set off spam flags. So
the e-mail just wouldn't go through regardless. Sorry.
Hey, did you find this page all by itself through Google or some other search engine? Great! But to really appreciate the entire site, you need to start here.
Dead tree references:
Mosby's 2004 Drug Guide David Nissen PharmD, Editor.© 2004. An imprint of Elsevier. The edition we're using isn't listed on Amazon.
Healing Anxiety & Depression
Daniel G. Amen, M.D., and Lisa C. Routh, M.D. © 2003. Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons. Mouse and I are both patients at one of Dr. Amen's clinics.
Instant Psychopharmacology 2nd Edition Ronald J. Diamond M.D. © 2002. Published by W.W. Norton
Essential Psychopharmacology Stephen M. Stahl, M.D., Ph. D. © 2000. Published by Cambridge University Press
A Primer of Drug Action Robert M. Julien, M.D., Ph. D. © 2001. We use the Ninth Edition. Sometimes that comes up on an Amazon search, usually it doesn't. Published by Worth Publishers
Handbook of Affective Disorders edited by Eugene S. Paykel, M.D. FRCPsych © 1992. Published by The Guilford Press.
The Complete Guide to Psychiatric Drugs Edward Drummond, M.D. © 2000. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Physicians' Desk Reference Editions 53 & 56 Maria Deutsch & Anu Gupta, Drug Information Specialists, et al. © 2002. Published by Medical Economics Company.
End of books used for this article.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Created Saturday, February 28, 2004
Last updated Saturday, December 05, 2009
Copyright © 2003, 2004 Jerod Poore. All rights reserved.
All material on this site is copyright © 2003, 2004 Jerod Poore. Except, of course, the PI sheets, that are the property of the drug companies who developed the drugs the sheets are about. And any documents that are written by other people which may be posted to this site will remain the property of the original authors. This page and no other material may be reproduced off site outside of the boundaries of fair use copying without the express permission of the copyright holder. That's usually me, so just ask first.
All rights reserved. No warranty is expressed or implied in this information. Consult one or more doctors and pharmacists before taking, or changing how you take any psychiatric medication. Your mileage may vary. What happened to us won't necessarily happen to you. I am neither a doctor nor a pharmacist. I don't portray either here or on TV. Only a doctor can diagnose and treat an illness. Some doctors tend to get pissed off by patients who know too much about medications, so tread lightly when and where appropriate. Diagnosing yourself from a website is like defending yourself in court, you suddenly have a fool for a doctor. Don't be a cyberchondriac, thinking you have every disease you see a website about, or that you'll get every side effect from every medication. All information on this site has been obtained through personal experience, the experiences of my friends, the experiences of people reported on online support groups, and from sources that are referenced throughout the site. As such the information presented here is not a substitute for real medical advice from your real doctor, just a compliment to it. No psychiatrists or pharmacists were harmed in the production of this website. All brand names of the drugs listed in this site are the trademarks of the companies listed after them in the pages about the drugs, even though those companies may or may not have been acquired by other companies who may or may not be listed in this site by the time you read this. Always read the PI sheet that comes with your medications and never ever throw them away. If you didn't get a PI sheet, demand one. No information about visitors to this site is collected or saved. Although from time to time I do look at search terms used to find it in an effort to make the information I present more relevant. Use only as directed. Void where prohibited.
"Everything is true, nothing is permitted." - Jerod Poore
