Seroquel-XR Index | Brand and Generic Availability ›
Crazy Meds Comprehensive Seroquel-XR pages

This is our basic overview of Seroquel-XR (quetiapine fumarate). Clicking on a “More…” link will take you to a page with greater detail. The Comprehensive Seroquel-XR pages contain all of the information from all of the “More…” pages, but with less explanatory material.

1.  Brand & Generic Names; Drug Class

US brand name:	Seroquel-XR
Generic name:	quetiapine fumarate
What is Seroquel-XR (quetiapine fumarate)?	Seroquel-XR (quetiapine fumarate) is in the Antipsychotics class of drugs.

More about Seroquel-XR’s generic availability, worldwide trade names, and more

2.  What is Seroquel-XR (quetiapine fumarate) used for

2.1  US FDA approved treatment(s)

Schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, as an add-on to an antidepressant to treat depression

2.2  Popular off-label uses

Insomnia, anxiety, Parkinson’s

More about Seroquel-XR approved & off-label uses

3.  When will Seroquel-XR (quetiapine fumarate) start working?

3.1  How long until Seroquel-XR starts working

Unlike other antipsychotics, which can start getting your symptoms under control within 24 hours, Seroquel can take up to a week to work. Unless you’re taking it for sleep. That first 25mg knocks out most people.

3.2  Will Seroquel-XR really work for what I have?

Pretty good for schizophrenia, so-so for bipolar mania, fairly good for bipolar depression.

More about how long until, and how well will Seroquel-XR work; and how Seroquel-XR compares with other drugs

4.  How to take and stop taking Seroquel-XR (quetiapine fumarate)

4.1  How to take Seroquel-XR

For bipolar: PI sheet: start at 100mg a day in two 50mg doses and increase by 100mg to 400mg day by day four. If needed, up it by 200mg a day until reaching 800mg a day by day six.
We suggest starting with one 25–50mg dose at night if you’re taking another mood stabilizers, or the 100mg a day in two 50mg doses if you aren’t. If you need to increase by 25–50mg a day every 3–4 days and stay at whatever dosage gets your symptoms under control. Unless you’re seriously flipping out, in which case follow the PI sheet’s guidelines until your symptoms are under control or you hit 800mg a day. For schizophrenia: PI sheet: start at 50mg a day, divided into two 25mg doses, but they still want to ramp you up to 300–400mg a day by day four.
We suggest starting with 50mg a day and, as with bipolar disorder, increasing by 25–50mg every 3–4 days until your symptoms are under control. If you’re crazy enough to be getting coded messages in your cereal, then get to 300–400mg by day four.

4.2  How to stop taking Seroquel-XR

Your doctor should be recommending that you reduce your dosage by 25–50mg a day every other day if you need to discontinue it. You can stop taking all it immediately if it’s an emergency (e.g. a life-threatening allergic reaction), but I wouldn’t recommend doing that without a doctor’s supervision. The major problem with stopping antipsychotics is a sudden return of your symptoms.

More about taking and discontinuing Seroquel-XR

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5.  Seroquel-XR’s (quetiapine fumarate’s) pros and cons

5.1  Pros

As one of the mildest - and most prescribed - of all antipsychotics it doesn’t really carry the antipsychotic stigma as heavily as the other meds in this class. That also means it’s less likely to cause side effects involving prolactin (e.g. leaking nipples or man boobs) and movement disorders.

5.2  Cons

You’ll sleep until next Tuesday. Of course, that could be a good thing, depending on how your life is at this moment. Other than the sleep thing, it takes longer than any other atypical antipsychotic to work. You’ll probably gain weight and you might come down with type 2 diabetes.

5.3  Interesting stuff your doctor probably didn’t tell you

Seroquel is marginally better absorbed with food. So if you feel you need just a little boost in the dosage, try taking it with dinner or a late night snack.

Like most drugs older people don’t clear it out of their systems as well, to the point that they may need a lower dosage. That’s not particularly interesting. What is interesting is that Seroquel seems to work better for people under 40 than over 40.
More of Seroquel-XR pros, cons, and interesting stuff

6.  Seroquel-XR (quetiapine fumarate) side effects

6.1  Typical Seroquel-XR side effects

The usual short-term side effects for second-generation / atypical antipsychotics (SGA/AAP): headache, nausea, dry mouth, sleepiness or insomnia, diarrhea or constipation, not giving a damn about anything (a.k.a. the zombification effect). Most, if not all of these will go away in a couple of weeks. Except for the excessive sleepiness, which could hang around for as long as you take this med, but is usually not much of a problem once you’re taking more than 100–200mg a day.
However, the excessively sleepiness tends to return if you start taking over 400–600mg a day. That’s also interesting, but many doctors and/or pharmacists will tell you that.
And, of course, weight gain. Although it’s not as bad as Zyprexa.

6.2  Uncommon Seroquel-XR side effects

Diabetes. Manic reaction. Muscle aches and pains. Getting all sweaty for no good reason. Tremor. Irregular heart beat and prolonged QT interval. While the sexual dysfunctions aren’t as bad as Risperdal (risperidone) or Zyprexa (olanzapine), they can still happen.

6.3  Freaky rare Seroquel-XR side effects

Infanticide. Priapism (the never-ending hard-on) from an overdose. Kids, don’t try this at home. The PI sheet also lists “bone pain” and “abnormal ejaculation” so I’d be especially careful about taking too much Seroquel as a Cialis substitute in order to stay hard.
More about Seroquel-XR side effects

7.  What Seroquel-XR (quetiapine fumarate) is best known for

Seroquel is notorious for two things - making you sleep until next Tuesday, and leaving you a hangover when you eventually wake up.
More about Seroquel-XR black box warnings, noted traits & effects

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8.  Seroquel-XR (quetiapine fumarate) half-life & how long until Seroquel-XR clears your system

Half-life: 12 hours. Clearance: 3 days.
Drugs.com’s drug-drug and drug-food interaction checker
More about Seroquel-XR pharmacokinetics & noted drug-drug & drug-food interactions

9.  How Seroquel-XR (quetiapine fumarate) works (the best current guess at any rate).

Seroquel is broad-spectrum antipsychotic, and is tied with Zyprexa for third place in how many, and which type, of neurotransmitter receptors it affects. Most of its activity involves reducing the activity 5HT-serotonin and alpha-1a & alpha-2c norepinephrine receptors. Seroquel also does a little norepinephrine reuptake inhibition and enhancement of the 5HT2 serotonin receptor, which accounts for its antidepressant effect.
More about how Seroquel-XR works. AKA Seroquel-XR mechanism/method of action, or pharmacodynamics.

10.  Comments

More comments As if I didn’t go on long enough here.
Consumer/patient comments about & experiences with Seroquel-XR

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

Crazy Meds’ Seroquel-XR discussion board
Seroquel-XR’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.

Seroquel-XR Index | Brand and Generic Availability ›
Crazy Meds Comprehensive Seroquel-XR pages

Bibliography

Date created Tuesday, 25 January 2011 at 17:03:23 Page Author: Jerod Poore Last edited by: JerodPoore

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Seroquel-XR Basic Overview by Jerod Poore is copyright 2011 Jerod Poore

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Almost all of the material on this site is by Jerod Poore and is copyright © 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 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.

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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]