Remember: Nobody on this site is a doctor,
therapist, or a pharmacist. Know your sources!
Crazy Meds is not responsible for the content of sites we provide links to.
We like them, but what's on those sites is their business, not ours.
What is a big deal is to avoid alcohol with antipsychotics. I didn't when I was first on
Risperdal and I think some occasional heavy drinking contributed to my nervous breakdown
on or about my birthday in February of 2002. Mixing alcohol and
benzodiazepines can be
fatal. Mixing alcohol and anticonvulsants is weird. Mixing alcohol and
most modern antidepressants is
generally not a big deal. But mixing alcohol and antipsychotics can seriously mess with
your head, sometimes with long-lasting results. Here is an example of what a couple of
glasses of wine and a low dosage of Seroquel
(quetiapine) can do to someone
in distress and looking for support on an Internet support group. Normally this person can
type proficiently:
siorry jmy popst lioikds l;ielk i am druikn
i dont driglk
i am toooo tired ot tyo;pw
i dolnt droinkkkkk
mky yese asre all mlessed ujp form anothner drugnnnnnnnand i haove a sevfer
healtdcalcl]]\
myua got toe er donot nfelel l ewelll at allllllllll
strfated birth donltroel pil;ls as fewa daYs ago
for metopauose
tye agian tomoerowow
---
Then, twenty minutes later:
theklank s brina
i have nbmb halnds and at heatdacah e
form new pillllllllllls well lsee dr tabout that domtoorrow
what isss keoppera?
caleed nursre aboutj mmmmy porblem wriantnng and wiath the bumv b'handedss
wils se dorctor tomeorw
headabke very bnead anow to gbed now
head burts
beok soom
gonit wondw worry pplaese
The withdrawal has been likened to taking small amounts of psychedelic drugs. Whether
that is a good or bad thing is up to individual experience. Others get rebound symptoms
for a day or two, sometimes longer and that's about it. Of course, that's
for issues where it's OK to stop taking meds at some point, like panic/ anxiety
disorders. The big problem is that the
bipolar and the schizophrenic are the worst about stopping their meds
because they think they're cured when their symptoms stop. Wrong answer!
Your symptoms stop because the meds are working. As of the early
21st century there are no cures for these disorders, just management of
symptoms. The good news is
you can just start right back up on the atypicals and get back to where you were in
controlling your symptoms.
One great thing about antipsychotics is that you can take them as required (or PRN in
medical shorthand). Feeling just a bit too anxious or manic? Try some Risperdal
(risperidone) or
Zyprexa (olanzapine) instead of increasing your normal amount of
benzos or mood stabilizers /
anticonvulsants. Once you feel
stable, you can just stop taking the extra antipsychotics. Let me stress the extra
part. If an antipsychotic is your primary medication and you're feeling just great you
have to keep taking your maintenance dosage, whatever that may be. Now you can discuss
with your doctor about taking a lower dosage and seeing how that works out. These meds are
very flexible when it comes to dosages. Go up, go down, in the long run it turns out to be
OK as they are far less picky than the
anticonvulsants.
Even though I was skeptical at first and thought the real reason for pushing
antipsychotics for bipolar and anxiety was money, I'm starting to come around to them. On
the bipolar side of things several act as true mood stabilizers for some people, helping
with both mania and depression. They are perfect for the non-compliant, which defines the
schizophrenic and bipolar, as some have long half-lives and they work just fine if you
stop taking them and start up again. The combination of atypical antipsychotics and
antidepressants is being shown to be the best thing since sex to combat bipolar depression
and refractory unipolar depression.
Conversion for atypicals. This is just an approximation, in case you need to switch
from one of the popular atypical antipsychotics to another quickly because of adverse
effects. Obviously 3mg of
Abilify (aripiprazole) will not sedate you like 100mg of
Seroquel (quetiapine). I've placed
them from the most to least potent to give you an idea of what the range is like. Note
that
Risperdal (risperidone) is 200 times as potent as
Seroquel (quetiapine). Depending on how your
symptoms are acting up it's between you and your doctor if you want to stop
taking one on Friday and start taking another on Saturday (or whenever you can
schedule time off for a med change). While switching
SSRIs isn't as big a deal, it's just a matter of some drug clearances (i.e.
you won't clear out the meds as quickly when you have two of them in your system
at the same time), having two antipsychotics in your system at the same time
does make it somewhat more likely that you could experience
EPS or even NMS. These work only for the starting
dosages. These things aren't exactly linear, therefore at the higher dosages they
don't exactly map out. So if you're switching from a high dosage of one to
another your doctor is probably writing you a prescription that makes a lot a
sense. If you want to try to do the math yourself, see the NIMH Psychoactive Drug Screening Program.
If you ask me how to use that site, you're not qualified to use it.
0.5mg
Risperdal (risperidone) = 2.5mg
Zyprexa (olanzapine) = 3mg
Abilify (aripiprazole) = 20mg
Geodon (ziprasidone HCl) = 100mg
Seroquel (quetiapine) = you
only want to take Clozaril (clozapine) if you're
really messed up and nothing else is going to work. OK, Clozaril (clozapine)
works on your brain in a completely different way as well, so there's not an
easy dosage equivalent. Plus it has some very specific uses that are
different from the other atypicals.
The same applies to switching between a
standard/typical antipsychotic and an novel/atypical. They do the same
sort of thing, but in slightly different ways. People do it all the time,
I just don't know an easy equivalent. Plus you really want to have
whatever you're switching from out of your system before you start what you're
switching to, unless the side effects are completely horrible and your
symptoms are even worse. As above, you just increase the risk of
EPS or even NMS with the two types of
antipsychotics in your system. It's all a matter of figuring out which is
more dangerous, the very small risk of EPS or NMS, or the chance of your doing
something very dangerous to yourself or others if you're not medicated enough.
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. Better yet,
if you run a business and want to advertise on Crazy Meds, see
our page on ad
rates and policies. I'm all about
fiscal transparency, so follow the money for full
disclosure of my pitiful finances.
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.
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
neurological and/or psychiatric medication. Your mileage may vary. What happened to us won't necessarily
happen to you. Nobody on this site is a doctor,
therapist, or a pharmacist. We don't portray them either here or on
TV. Only doctors 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. Self-prescribing is just as dangerous. 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.
Know your sources! As such the information
presented here is not a substitute for real medical advice from your real doctor, just a
compliment to it. No neurologists, psychiatrists, therapists 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.
Loudly.
Crazy Meds is not responsible for the content of sites we provide links to.
We like them, or they're paid advertisements, or they're something you should
read to make an informed decision about a particular med. Sometimes
they're more than one of those things. But what's on those sites is their business, not ours.
Very little information about visitors to this site is collected or
saved. And 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
