Follow these links to the previous and next pages, or the index page.
‹ The marginally updated format | Drug Guide Index | More Names & Availability ›
Clicking on a link in the Table of Contents will take you to that section of the drug guide.

The basic overview page is a briefer, albeit more structured version of the flat format. The main difference is the links to all of the pages that have more information¹ about a drug.

1.  Brand & Generic Names; Drug Class

US Brand Name: The drug’s brand/trade/proprietary name in the United States
generic name: The drug’s generic/International Nonproprietary Name (INN)
Class: How we categorized the drug.
A link to the page with more about brand & generic names, and availability

2.  Approved and off-label uses of a med

2.1  US FDA approved use

What a drug has official approval to be prescribed for in the US.

2.2  Popular off-label uses

Mostly the clinically significant (i.e. it often works, but for a variety of reasons there’s not enough money to be made to justify the costs of getting FDA approval) uses.

A link to the page with more about approved and off-label uses.

3.  Pros and cons

A short overview of each. Along with..

4.  Interesting Stuff Your Doctor Probably Won’t Tell You

Sometimes useful, often not.

A link to the page with more and more detail about the pros, cons, and whatever interesting stuff we can dig up.

Time for ads already?

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5.  Side Effects

These are nowhere near all the potential side effects a med can have. Just a representative sample.

5.1  Typical Side Effects

Practically everyone who takes this drug will get one or more of these.

5.2  Not So Common Side Effects

You may or may not get one or more of these. Don’t be surprised either way.

5.3  Freaky Rare Side Effects

Included for gallows humor.

A link to the page with even more, and more detail about side effects, including ways to mitigate them².

6.  How to take and stop taking the drug

6.1  How to take the drug

Mostly a summary of what’s in the PI sheet and how we would tweak it a little.

6.2  How to stop taking the drug

Unless there’s a specific protocol, it’s typically decreasing the dosage by the standard titration amount (whatever the PI sheet tells you to increase the dosage by when you start taking it) the average time it takes to clear from your system.

A link to the page with way more about taking and discontinuing the med

7.  When will the drug start working?

7.1  How long until it starts working

This is our best guess, based on consumer experiences, information from the books & websites in the bibliography, and the PI sheet.

7.2  Chances of it working

Our best guess, if any, without a lot of detail

A link to the page with details, more info on efficacy.
And everyone’s favorite blood sport: how it compares with other medications

8.  What a drug is best known for

Drugs get a reputation for things. We coined the term “supermodel drug” to describe Topamax, because it makes you skinny and stupid.

A link to a page with more noted traits, along with any warnings and anything else you should be careful about.

But wait, we have more ads.

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9.  The drug’s half-life & how long until it clears your system

It’s down here because we’re lumping all the geeky stuff together.
Drugs.com’s drug-drug and drug-food interaction checker

A link to the page with all sorts of pharmacokinetic and drug-whatever interaction data.

10.  Current guess about how the drug works

Pretty much what’s in the PI sheet. Unless the PI sheet is really, really out of date and wrong.

A link to the page with all sorts of pharmacodynamic and mechanisms of action information.

11.  Comments

Whatever else there is to write about.

A link to the page with even more comments.
And consumer comments.

12.  Discussion board, PI sheet and other useful links

“Other useful links” being official drug company sites, PI sheets from other countries, medication review sites, etc.

Finally a link to the bibliography.

‹ < The marginally updated format | Drug Guide Index | More Names & Availability › >
Follow these links to the previous and next pages, or the index page.

¹ Allegedly. It's a process. The blanks are being filled in. If slowly.

² In theory at least. I.e. in theory the ways to help counter the side effects will work. In theory there will be something written up about how to do something about the side effects.

Page created by: Jerod Poore. Date created: 1 August 2011 Last edited by:

Page design and explanatory material by Jerod Poore, copyright © 2004 - 2012. All rights reserved.

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.

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 medication¹. 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 or Safari, which is what a plurality of visitors use. And I’m running Windows XP3. On a computer that sits on top of my desk. With a 23 inch monitor. Hey, at least you can make the text larger or smaller by clicking on the + or - buttons in the upper right hand corner. If you have Java enabled. Like 99% of the websites on the planet, Crazy Meds is hosted on domain running an open source operating system with a variety of open source applications, including the software used to display what you’ve been reading. As such Crazy Meds is not responsible for whatever weird shit your browser does or does not do when you read this site².
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.

‘Everything is true, nothing is permitted.’ - Jerod Poore

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]