BuSpar Index
Crazy Meds Comprehensive BuSpar pages

This is our summary of BuSpar. Clicking on a “More…” link will take you to a page with greater detail. The Comprehensive BuSpar pages contain the information from all of the “More…” pages.

1.  Brand & Generic Names; Drug Class

US brand name:	BuSpar
Generic name:	buspirone hydrochloride
What is BuSpar (buspirone hydrochloride)?	BuSpar (buspirone hydrochloride) is in the Anxiolytics/Anti-anxiety class of drugs.

More about BuSpar’s generic availability, worldwide trade names, and more

2.  What is BuSpar (buspirone hydrochloride) used for

2.1  US FDA approved treatment(s)

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)

2.2  Popular off-label uses

PTSD, other anxiety disorders, Depression (either by itself or with other meds), SSRI-induced sexual dysfunction, smoking cessation.

More about BuSpar’s approved & off-label uses

3.  When will BuSpar (buspirone hydrochloride) start working?

3.1  How long until BuSpar starts working

Because of the nonlinear pharmacokinetics, it’s hard to know when you should get an effect from BuSpar, but Bristol-Myers seems to think two to three days should be sufficient. Like most things that work on your serotonin, especially as this is likely to augment an antidepressant, I would make that two to three weeks to decide if BuSpar helping at all.

3.2  Will BuSpar really work for what I have?

BuSpar seems to be immensely variable in how it hits people — even studies showing its effectiveness noticed this. Like most meds, it’s all a matter of hitting the right neurotransmitters in the right ways. But since it’s low on the side effects and non-addictive, it’s worth a stop on the med-go-round if you’re experiencing SSRI poop-out or inadequate relief of anxiety disorders with an SSRI.

More about how long until, and how well will BuSpar work; and how BuSpar compares with other drugs

4.  How to take and stop taking BuSpar (buspirone hydrochloride)

4.1  How to take BuSpar

The starting dose is usually 5 mg 3 times per day, for a total of 15 per day. With a half life of 3 hours, stepping up every two to three days is not unreasonable biologically — however, it’s insane from a common-sense point of view. Give BuSpar a week between dose step-ups at least, so you can see if it’s doing anything for you at the lower dose. Standard dosages of BuSpar in clinical trials are usually 20 to 30 mg per day; the maximum dosage of BuSpar is 60 mg per day.

4.2  How to stop taking BuSpar

Given a half-live of two to three hours, stepping down by 5 mg at every day is reasonable. Though every other day would be safer. Unless it didn’t do anything at all, including no psychiatric effects, including stuff like making the anxiety or depression worse. In which case go for 10mg a day.

More about taking and discontinuing BuSpar

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5.  BuSpar’s (buspirone hydrochloride’s) pros and cons

5.1  Pros

Few drug-drug interactions, weight neutral, and a generally low side effect profile.

5.2  Cons

A lot of people conclude it doesn’t do shit.

5.3  Interesting stuff your doctor probably didn’t tell you

Per the the PI sheet if you take BuSpar with aspirin you will get a 23% increase in BuSpar’s plasma levels. Now combine that with the increase you get with taking BuSpar on an empty stomach and you get a significant boost. Provided you don’t puke it all up.
More of BuSpar’s pros, cons, and interesting stuff

6.  BuSpar’s (buspirone hydrochloride’s) side effects

6.1  Typical side effects

The usual array of common med symptoms — dizziness, lightheadedness, nausea, headaches. Cold-like symptoms, i.e. less severe flu-like symptoms that every other med on the planet can cause. Nonspecific chest pain.

6.2  Uncommon side effects

Blood pressure changes. Conjunctivitis. Altered sense of taste. Muscle cramps. Urinary frequency.

6.3  Freaky rare side effects

Burning tongue. Photophobia, or turning into Vlad the Impaler. Pelvic inflammatory disease. Yup. BuSpar not only gave someone an STD, they gave them an untreated STD! Alcohol abuse. Honey, I didn’t mean to quit AA! The BuSpar done made me do it!
More about BuSpar’s side effects

7.  What BuSpar (buspirone hydrochloride) is best known for

Being a total disappointment.
More about BuSpar’s black box warnings, noted traits & effects

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8.  BuSpar’s (buspirone hydrochloride’s) half-life & how long until BuSpar clears your system

Half-life: 2 to 3 hours. Clearance: one day, three days at the most.
Drugs.com’s drug-drug and drug-food interaction checker
More about BuSpar’s pharmacokinetics & noted drug-drug & drug-food interactions

9.  How BuSpar (buspirone hydrochloride) works (the best current guess at any rate).

As with most of these crazy meds it’s easier to say what BuSpar doesn’t do. BuSpar doesn’t do any of the fun benzodiazepene fuck-you-up-and-get-high effects. BuSpar doesn’t knock you out. BuSpar doesn’t hit GABA. What BuSpar does do is to keep serotonin within the 5HT_1A neurons, thus fooling your brain into thinking it has more serotonin than it actually has. BuSpar also does some noticeable dopamine agonism-antagonism on the dopamine D₂ receptor. When combined with an SSRI this can help with sexual dysfunction and to prevent SSRI poop-out, per Dr. Stahl in Essential Psychopharmacology.
More about how BuSpar works. AKA BuSpar’s mechanism/method of action, or pharmacodynamics.

10.  Comments

BuSpar is a quirky med, and there’s currently nothing else approved for use in its class of azapirones. At least in English speaking countries.
While BuSpar’s value for some flavors of anxiety is important, more important is its potential to augment an SSRI that was working great and then quit on you, the bastard.
BuSpar is a maintenance med - i.e. you wait for the calming effects to build up and you keep taking it until you either learn to deal with your problems on your own or you live with the fact you’re going to be taking BuSpar for the foreseeable future. Something I feel should be considered as a maintenance medication long before the benzos, as it doesn’t build up tolerance or addiction, and thus avoids many of the problems with long-term benzodiazepine use, particularly as a prophylactic (preventing anxiety before it starts).
More comments As if I didn’t go on long enough here.
Consumer/patient comments about & experiences with BuSpar

11.  Discussion board, PI sheet and other allegedly useful links

Crazy Meds’ BuSpar discussion board
BuSpar’s Full US Prescribing Information / PI Sheet
Allegedly Useful Links. Mostly any official sites we could find for this med and PI sheets from countries other than the US.

BuSpar Index
Crazy Meds Comprehensive BuSpar pages

Bibliography

Date created Friday, 8 July 2011 at 10:56:00 Page Creator: Jessica Allan? Last edited by:

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BuSpar Basic Overview by Jessica Allan? is copyright 2011

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¹ 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.

² Have I mentioned how open source operating systems for commercial applications is one of the dumbest ideas in the history of dumb ideas?
[begin rant] I rent a dedicated server for Crazy Meds. It’s sitting on a rack somewhere in Southern California along with a bunch of other servers that other people have rented. The hardware is identical, but no two machines have exactly the same operating systems. I don’t even need to see what is on any of the others to know this. If somebody got their server at the exact same time, with the exact same features as I did, I’m confident that there would be noticeable differences in some aspects of the operating systems. So what does this mean? For one thing it means that no two computers in the same office of a single company have the same operating system, and the techs can spend hours figuring out what the fuck the problem could be based on that alone. It also means that application software like IP board that runs the forum here has to have so many fucking user-configurable bells and whistles that even when I read the manual I can’t find every setting, or every location that every flag needs to be set in order for a feature to run the way I want it to run. And in the real world it means you can get an MBA not only with an emphasis on resource planning, but with an emphasis on using SAP - a piece of software so complex there are now college programs on how to use it. You might think, “But don’t people learn how to use Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator in college?” Sure, in order to create stuff. And in a way you’re creating stuff with SAP. But do you get a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with an emphasis on Photoshop?
Back in the Big Iron Age the operating systems were proprietary, and every computer that took up an entire room with a raised floor and HVAC system, and had less storage and processing power than an iPhone, had the same operating system as every other one, give or take a release level. But when a company bought application software like SAP, they also got the source code, which was usually documented and written in a way to make it easy to modify the hell out of it. Why? Because accounting principles may be the same the world over, and tax laws the same across each country and state, but no two companies have the same format for their reports, invoices, purchase orders and so forth. Standards existed and were universally ignored. If something went wrong it went wrong the same way for everyone, and was easy to track down. People didn’t need to take a college course to learn how to use a piece of software.
I’m not against the open source concept entirely. Back then all the programmers read the same magazines, so we all had the same homebrew utilities. We even had the forerunner to QR Code to scan the longer source code. Software vendors and computer manufacturers sponsored conventions so we could, among other things, swap recipes for such add-ons and utilities. While those things would make our lives easier, they had nothing to do with critical functions of the operating system. Unless badly implemented they would rarely cause key application software to crash and burn. Whereas today, with open source everything, who the hell knows what could be responsible some part of a system failing. [/end rant]