Desyrel (trazodone hydrochloride)

US Brand Name: Desyrel

generic name: trazodone hydrochloride

Other Forms: orange flavored solution

Class: antidepressants

1.  Other brand names & branded generic names¹

• Sideril
• Trazalon
• Trazonil
• Azonz (Finland)
• Beneficat (Argentina)
• Bimaran (Argentina)
• Deprax (Spain)
• Depresil (Philippines)
• Depyrel (Israel)
• Desirel (Thailand)
• Mesyrel (Taiwan)
• Manegan (Argentina)
• Molipaxin (United Kingdom; Ireland; South Africa)
• Pragmarel (France)
• Reslin (Japan)
• Taxagon (Argentina)
• Thombran (Germany)
• Trazolan (Belgium; India; Netherlands)
• Trazone (Indonesia; Portugal; Taiwan)
• Trittico (Austria; Colombia; Greece; Hong Kong; Italy; Peru; Switzerland)
• Torazodon (Japan)
• Trittico (Israel)
• Trazodil 100 (Israel)

2.  Trazodone’s FDA Approved Uses

Major depressive disorder, with or without anxiety.

3.  Trazodone’s Off-Label Uses

• Panic/Anxiety
• Sleep Disorders
• Bipolar Depression
• Sleep Disorders
• Chronic Fatigue
• Sleep Disorders
• Fibromyalgia
• Sleep Disorders
• Erectile Dysfunction, where it failed. But…
• SSRI-induced sexual dysfunction. Overall the data are mixed, but it’s still worth a shot.
• Sleep Disorders
• Arthritis
• Sleep Disorders
• Lupus
• Sleep Disorders
• Irritable Bowel Syndrome
• Sleep Disorders
• Eating Disorders
• Are you tired yet?

4.  Trazodone’s pros and cons

4.1  Pros

The antidepressant you need if you have the combination of insomnia combined with mild depression and/or anxiety.

4.2  Cons

You might just sleep a little too well.

5.  Trazodone’s Side Effects

5.1  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.

5.2  Not So Common Side Effects

Low blood pressure, weight gain. General cardiac weirdness, so trazodone 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 trazodone. It usually goes away in a day or two.

5.3  Freaky Rare Side Effects

Priapism so bad that surgical intervention was required to get rid of the unending hard-on. Bob Dole shouldn’t have relied on Viagra to take on Bill Clinton, Bob Dole should have tried trazodone to go macho a macho with the president. Wait, there’s more. Not only can men get stuck that way, but women too, as it can cause clitoral priapism. And if that weren’t enough, persistent genital arousal disorder and spontaneous orgasms in an elderly postmenopausal woman.

6.  Interesting Stuff Your Doctor Probably Won’t Tell You about Trazodone

Trazodone is best taken with food, so take it after dinner, or dessert, to ensure a quality night’s rest.
The major metabolite of trazodone is meta-chlorophenylpiperazine (mCPP), one of the nigh-infinite number of drugs sold as “ecstasy” in the US in the 1990s. Why is beyond me, as it’s a hallucinogen that gives you a migraine². Unless it was supposed to scare those party kids straight or something like that.

7.  Trazodone’s Dosage and How to Take 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 trazodone 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.

8.  How Long trazodone Takes to Work

Like Remeron, two weeks for depression, one-to-two nights for sleep.

9.  How to Stop Taking trazodone

Your doctor should be recommending that you reduce your dosage by 50–100mg a day every 3–5 days if you need to stop taking trazodone.

10.  Comments

Trazodone is the official antidepressant of Sleepy-bye Land. It is rarely prescribed as monotherapy for depression these days. It’s mostly an add-on antidepressant in case you have insomnia combined with your depression and/or anxiety, or prescribed as a sleep aid. If you respond well to SSRIs and you’re not sleeping or are otherwise agitated, trazodone might be 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, 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 had one hell of a time getting up every afternoon morning.

Given the nature of some of trazodone’s more…unusual side effects, it’s been evaluated for various sexual dysfunctions. The only one it’s half-decent for is SSRI-induced sexual dysfunction. So if you take an SSRI, still have some residual anxiety and insomnia, and can’t get it up with a forklift, trazodone might be worth a shot. It generally takes over 200mg a night before it does anything for your plumbing.

In case you’re wondering, this paper describes the surgery to correct priapism. It has pictures. Graphic pictures.

11.  Discussion board

Crazy Meds’ Desyrel discussion board

12.  Your Comments About and Experiences with Desyrel

Tell us what you think about Desyrel (trazodone)

I was recently put on Trazadone(300mg) and Seroquel(150mg) for treatment of insomnia and anxiety while kicking alcohol. The combo knocked me flat asleep and I’ve been getting full night sleeps for the first time in a decade or so. Pretty much every thing crazymeds says is true: —vivid crazy-ass dreams for the first week —definite hunger pangs after taking (even right after dinner) —sleepy, hangover-like feeling in morning —full-night sleep —blood pressure lowers dramatically after taking —sometimes get RLS (restless leg syndrome) All in all, I’ll gladly trade the cons for the pros of getting a complete sleep. It’s been almost 3 weeks, so I’ll post back in another couple weeks as I begin to taper off these meds.

I only take 50mg to help with my Narcolepsy. I’m drowsy all day & dream all night. The dreams keep me from resting at night. I did not experience any side effects, but again I only take 50mg. I’m not dreaming as soon as my head hits the pillow. Yes!

I’ve been taking trazodone for sleep. And I am all caught up now. I can sleep very late, have a hard time being alert at work, have a very dry mouth. Since I can’t afford to sleep all the time, and no longer want to sleep all my time away, I am going to try and cut back on my dose. When I first started on trazadone I could take 300 mg and still not sleep. I recently found out I have celiac disease and have begun a gluten free diet, which I believe has increased my med absorption. For the last four days I have been sleeping a lot and have had some very interesting dreams and I believe that is because I am getting the effects of the med now. I have also had some nausea. Has definitely made me less anxious but I feel almost emotionless now.

I have had really realistic, HORRIBLE nightmares/terrors most of my life. They have decreased as I’ve gotten older (from nightly as a child to weekly or so as a teen and now maybe monthly or less) and really don’t need any help in that department. Are you all talking about just really vivid dreamy dreams or nightmares? Intensified nightmares aren’t something I can handle and I’m sure my husband wouldn’t appreciate them either as I tend to wake him up with them as it is. I’ve just been prescribed this new med and have yet to actually take it.

would you recommend switching from seroquel to torazodone? wish to stop the hunger pangs from seroquel, but need, absolutely need the sleep it offers. at 100–200 mg with seroquel. hate the hang over feeling , but won’t sleep without it. thinking of trying torazodone to eliminate hunger/weight gain issue, but not sure if it’s worth the switch.

Enter your own Comments & Experiences with Desyrel here.
You must be a registered member of the Crazy Meds Talk forum to post a comment on this page.

13.  Full US PI sheet, Global SPCs & PILs, check for drug-drug interactions

Desyrel Full US Prescribing Information / PI Sheet

Check for drug-drug interactions

14.  Bibliography

Physicians’ Desk Reference Edition 56 Maria Deutsch & Anu Gupta, Drug Information Specialists, et al. © 2002. Published by Medical Economics Company.

Instant Psychopharmacology 2nd Edition Ronald J. Diamond M.D. © 2002. Published by W.W. Norton

The Complete Guide to Psychiatric Drugs Edward Drummond, M.D. © 2000. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Healing Anxiety & Depression Daniel G. Amen, M.D., and Lisa C. Routh, M.D. © 2003. Published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons.

Mosby’s 2004 Drug Guide David Nissen PharmD, Editor.© 2004. An imprint of Elsevier.

² It's probably responsible for the hangover you get the first few times you take trazodone. And you'd have to take a shitload of trazodone, probably a dangerously high amount, to get the ecstasy with a migraine effect.

Date created 25 Apr 2011 - 12:58 Page Creator: JerodPoore Last edited by:

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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]