Welcome to Crazy Meds, where you can learn what’s good, what’s bad, what’s interesting, and what’s plain weird and funny about psychiatric and neurological medications.
If you know the name of the medication(s) you’re looking for, you’ll probably want our list of drugs by name. There’s also our much larger list of all the meds we know about to treat various conditions, including all the brand/trade names we can find for every med.
We also have the drugs sorted into broad categories with lots of overlapping memberships: Mood Stabilizers, Antidepressants, Antipsychotics, Anxiolytics / Anti-anxiety drugs, Antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) / Anticonvulsants, and Meds for Migraines and Neuropathic Pain. This is a site for the obsessed and depressed, the manic and the panicked, the schizophrenic and epileptic, the migraineurs and bipolar, those with GAD, SAD, OCD, PTSD, in pain or have an otherwise non-standard brain.1
If you have any specific questions about a drug that wasn’t answered on its page, couldn’t find the drug you’re interested in, or want some help in figuring out which medication is the right one for you, then visit Crazy Meds Talk: Our forum for the mentally interesting. We aren’t doctors or anything, and we don’t diagnose, but we have more experience than we ever wanted when it comes to brain cooties and the crazy meds used to treat them. We’re all about helping each other know what the drugs can and cannot do, what they are likely to do for us and to us, and work with our doctors to make the best, or least bad, choice in medication(s) as quickly as possible.
If you’re unsure if you should be taking drugs to treat your condition(s) in the first place, see our all-purpose are you messed-up enough to need medication test.
If you do need to take medication the math is really simple: which sucks less? Taking an imperfect medication that controls the symptoms of a condition that puts your life somewhere in the spectrum of “barely tolerable” to “dear God please kill me now;” or trying to get through life with that same condition which will keep getting worse the longer you go without treating it. A lot of these meds suck donkey dong, but you know what? When you’re mentally ill, and/or have some neurological problem like epilepsy or migraines, and you’re not taking any medications, or not taking the right medications, it sucks syphilitic donkey dong while a red-hot poker is being jammed up your ass.
You don’t think it’s that bad? That’s because you’re reading this site, which is on the Internet. Which means you have access to the resources needed to read it. Have you ever been homeless and crazy? I have. Twice. Have you ever been in the lock ward of a psychiatric hospital? I have. Before Medicare Part D-for-Defraud existed, which was also when all the meds I took were available only as brand, I ran up so much credit-card debt paying for them I had to sell my house. But I was lucky, because:
1) I had a house to sell. Most of the mentally interesting don’t.
2) I also had credit cards, as do many of my fellow bipolar types do. And we often run them to the limit. At least I didn’t buy anything stupid.2
3) I sold it in 2004, so I got out of the real estate pyramid scheme before it all came crashing down on everybody.
And my experiences were nothing compared with the lives of people I saw around me. I’m a fucking poseur when it comes to the syphilitic donkey dong and red-hot poker meeting each other in my stomach. I may no longer be able to hold down a job, a relationship, or be moderately functional more than a few hours a day a few days a week (at best), but I don’t live in a constant state of fear inside of a cardboard box.
So, if you really need meds and aren’t taking them, or taking them sporadically, or if you’re taking completely inappropriate medications, then you had better get ready. Falling into the abyss happens faster than you can imagine.
And it’s no picnic if you’re taking neurological / psychiatric medications when you shouldn’t be taking any at all.
Things like mental illness and epilepsy can’t be dealt with by gentle hugs, prayer and pretty angels, the fad diet of the week and a basket full of overpriced supplements. Like a lot of aspects of life where you have to make a decision between two options, your only choice is to figure out which one is going to suck less.
Once upon a time these conditions were totally invisible and everyone thought we were making it up as an excuse to avoid whatever we had to do. Now they are visible, more-or-less, on MRIs, CT, SPECT and PET scans, and various flavors of EEGs. Eventually there will be accurate and affordable genetic tests, although that could do as much harm as good. There are also measurable differences in the brains of people who have various conditions vs. those who have none. They are the most obvious in those with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. We’re almost at the point of being able to identify with really good certainty that someone has bipolar or schizophrenia (but usually cannot distinguish between them) based upon the physical characteristics of their brain while they’re still alive. Although their will always be people3 who think we’re faking it.
To resurrect my old analogy, these are physical conditions like a broken leg. The above tests are like x-rays, although currently they are extremely expensive aren’t always worth the cost. Regardless, you get your diagnosis and your meds are your cast and crutches. If your leg is totally hosed, your meds are like a cane and the pins they need to implant, both of which you’ll probably need to have for a very long time, if not permanently. And just as you need to explain the cane you need to help you walk and the pins when you go through metal detectors or get an MRI, so too must you explain your condition and meds at certain times in your life.
We deal with the cerebral equivalent of broken legs. Physical conditions, not purely psychological ones, that are treated with physical methods: drugs, surgery, or electromagnetism. The information on this site is to help you work with your doctor(s) to find the right treatment options. Too many of us get nothing more than 15-minute appointments with overworked doctors or nurse-practitioners, so we need all the help we can get. We need to talk to our prescribers about the best med treat our condition, and not the most profitable one.
2 Unless you consider meds with slim-to-none odds of working stupid. But Mouse was quickly running out of options, and slim-to-none was better than giving up.
3 All too often they're family members or employers.
Page created by: Jerod Poore. Date created: 15 September 2010 Last edited by:
Page design and explanatory material copyright © 2004 - 2011 Jerod Poore. All rights reserved.
Almost all of the material on this site is copyright © 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 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 usually cool with it.
All rights reserved. No warranty is expressed or implied in this information. Consult one or more doctors and/or 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.
The information on Crazy Meds pertains to and is intended for adults. While some information about children and adolescents is occasionally presented (e.g. US FDA approvals), pediatric-specific data such as dosages, side effects, off-label applications, etc. are rarely included in the articles on drugs or discussed on the forum. If you are looking for information regarding meds for children you’ll have to go somewhere else.
Know your sources!
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 as dangerous as buying meds from fraudulent online pharmacies that promise you medications without prescriptions.
All information on this site has been obtained through our personal experience and the experiences family, friends, what people have reported on various reputable sites all over teh intergoogles, the medications’ product information / summary of product characteristic (PI/SPC) sheets, and from sources that are referenced throughout the site. As such the information presented here is not intended as a substitute for real medical advice from your real doctor, just a compliment to it. You should never, ever, replace what a real doctor tells you with something from a website on the Internet. The farthest you should ever take it is getting a second opinion from another real doctor. Educate yourself - always read the PI/SPC sheet or patient information leaflet (PIL) that comes with your medications and never ever throw them away.
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 else we think you should read to help you 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. From time to time I look at search terms used and which pages they bring up in an effort to make the information I present more relevant. And the country of origin, just because I’m geeky like that. That’s about it. Depending on how you feel about Schrodinger, our privacy policy should either assuage or exacerbate your paranoia.
All brand names of the drugs listed in this site are the trademarks of the companies named on the PI/SPC sheet associated with the medication, sometimes on the pages about the drugs, even though those companies may have been acquired by other companies who may or may not be listed in this site by the time you read this. Or the rights to the drug were sold to another company. And any or all of the companies involved may have changed their names.
Crazy Meds is optimized for the browser you’re not using on the platform you wish you had. Between you and me, it all looks a lot cleaner using Firefox.
No neurologists, psychiatrists, therapists or pharmacists were harmed in the production of this website. Use only as directed. Void where prohibited. Contains nuts. Certain restrictions may apply. All data are subject to availability. Not available on all mobile devices or in all dimensions of reality.
*While there are plenty of books to help you with hypochondria, for some reason there’s not much in the way of websites. Then again, staying off of the Internet is a large part of curing/managing the disorder.
‘Everything is true, nothing is permitted.’ - Jerod Poore
