Desyrel's (trazodone's) pros and cons:

Pros: The antidepressant you need if you have the combination of insomnia combined with mild depression and/or anxiety.  One of the few, if any, antidepressants and/or sleep medications on the market that is not addictive / habit forming.

Cons: You might just sleep a little too well.

Desyrel's (trazodone's) Typical Side Effects: - sleepiness, headache, sleepiness, dizziness, sleepiness, nausea, sleepiness, dry mouth, sleepiness, blurry vision, sleepiness, sweating, sleepiness, insomnia or sleepiness, diarrhea or constipation, and did I mention you'll be tired? Most everything but the sleepiness and, if you get the, dizziness and blurry vision, will go away within a week or two.  The dizziness and blurry vision may take a little longer.  If they last too long, talk to your doctor.

Desyrel's (trazodone's) Not So Common Side Effects: Low blood pressure, weight gain. General cardiac weirdness, so Desyrel shouldn't be used if you have a history or family history of heart issues, at least, not without prior clearance from a cardiologist. Since it makes you sleep better, many people report vivid or unusual dreams. Like Seroquel, another medication prescribed for insomnia alone, there's sometimes a nasty hangover the first few days after using Desyrel. It usually goes away in a day or two.

 These may or may not happen to you don't, so don't be surprised one way or the other.

 You aren't going to get these. I promise.

Interesting Stuff Your Doctor Probably Won't Tell You: Desyrel (trazodone) is best taken with food, so take it after dinner, or dessert, to ensure a quality night's rest.

Desyrel's (trazodone's) Dosage and How to Take Desyrel (trazodone): The initial dose is 150mg a night, taken after dinner or "a light snack." But, really, start at just 50mg if you want to wake up the next morning. If you don't respond after one week, increase it to 100mg. Unlike SSRIs, people respond to Desyrel rather quickly, so you can work up to that 150mg dosage after two weeks, then wait a month before increasing the dosage. After that it's an increase of 50mg a day every four days or so, dividing the dosage, until you reach the maximum of 400mg a day.

Days to Reach a Steady State: Steady state data weren't published, probably due to its having a double metabolism with an active metabolite.

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 Desyrel (trazodone) Takes to Work: Unlike most reuptake inhibitors, Desyrel works for 75% of people within two weeks. If it's going to work at all, that is. Give it a month, of course.

Desyrel's (trazodone's) Half-Life:  Desyrel (trazodone) has a double metabolism. The half-life for trazodone is 3 to 6 hours, while the half-life for its metabolite is 5 to 9 hours. Apothecon didn't publish an aggregate, so maybe at least 15 hours total.

Average Time for Desyrel (trazodone) to Clear Out of Your System:  I'm guessing three days to clear out of your system.

Comments: Desyrel (trazodone) is the official antidepressant of Sleepy-bye Land. It is rarely prescribed as monotherapy these days. Hell, Desyrel is rarely prescribed at all, the generic trazodone is what is in all those bottles. It's mostly an add-on antidepressant in case you have insomnia combined with your depression and/or anxiety. If you respond well to SSRIs and you're not sleeping or are otherwise agitated, trazodone is a good addition to your cocktail to make sure you sleep. And sleep. And sleep. If you're going for the combination of antipsychotic and antidepressant, don't mix Desyrel (trazodone) with Seroquel if you want to wake up any time this week. We've come across one person actually taking this combination and she has one hell of a time getting up every morning.

Manufacturers: Apothecon (original manufacturer), Pfizer (US licensee), Watson (one of several producers of the generic form)

Sample US Cost: $135 for 60 tablets of 50mg brand name Desyrel. $11 for 60 tablets of 50mg of the generic trazodone. See why the generic is prescribed a bazillion times more often than the brand?

As of 11/11/2003. Full retail for the uninsured. Go ahead and gloat, citizens of civilized countries and all of you with full medical coverage.

Sample Canadian Cost: $37 for 100 tablets of 50mg brand name Desyrel. $37 for 100 tablets of generic trazodone. You don't save much going north in this case.

As of 11/11/2003. 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.

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Take care, and keep taking your crazy meds!

Jerod

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.

Copyright © 2003 - 2008 Jerod Poore. All rights reserved.

Almost all of the material on this site is copyright © 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 Jerod Poore. Except, of course, the PI sheets, those 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.  You cannot reproduce this page or any other material on this 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.  That means if want to print out a few pages to take to your doctor, therapist, counselor, support group, non-understanding family members or something like that - then that's OK to just do.  Go for it!  Please.  As long as you include this copyright notice and the following disclaimer, I'm cool with it.

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.

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