Meds Experiences Thread!!

Yeah, Seroquel ain't pleasant either. It gets the job done, but basically you're not gonna be doing much else. I *love* my Seroquel. I know folks who take it regularly who love theirs too. But like with any medication there's positives & negatives that one must weigh for their individual case.

And seriously, I'm so glad the solution of more Lexapro was found. That medication is NOT FUN to taper off.

 

tfw your medication's side effects make you vomit so often it's stopped getting you out of work

 

i'm finally completely off the Lexapro, so hopefully the nausea and vomiting subside. however.

today i'm having absolutely gnarly vertigo. i got spells of vertigo last time i quit lexapro. hopefully this only lasts a couple days, like last time, but. GOD. vertigo sucks.

 

(crossposted from my Brainbent thread)

so my energy level is officially A Lot Better on Buspar, i think. today i woke up an hour before i needed to for work, and i was just AWAKE! i am so so SO not a morning person, so this is unusual for me. and i haven't been feeling the sort of dragging exhaustion that is so typical of depression for me.

but my interest level is still pretty low. i had that whole extra hour before work... and i couldn't think of a single thing to do. i could have played one of my many video games, or watched netflix, or read, or even gone out to get a coffee or something. but nothing sounded interesting.

i know that antidepressants will typically start to impact your energy levels before anything else, so i'm hoping this is a sign that it is indeed working. i just wish the rest of my symptoms would catch up.

 

Eyyy!! So I just got back from a doctor's appointment wherein we added another med to my prescription so I can switch antidepressants when I want, because Trintellix, while working great, is currently costing $150/month, which my parents can do but we'd all rather /not/
So I have a prescription for Wellbutrin that I can fill at some point in the next few months when i feel stable enough to make a switch (right now I'm moving out of my parents place for good in 2 days and still on a job, search, so NOT RIGHT NOW THANKS). And I just got back from the doctor and remembered that I forgot to ask her how to switch. oops.
I am planning to find a therapist and can probly get reff'd to someone qualified to help me switch drugs when i'm ready to, but i figured i'd ask ppl here for advice re: switching meds. I assume I let one work its way out of my system before starting the other?

 

I mean, that's probably the safest option if you have no other advice? I think that's really something where an expert opinion is probably needed. I know someone who switched from Trintellix to a higher dose of Effexor and did not get completely off one before raising the other. I just don't know.

 

Yeah, googled around and looks like I'll def wanna find a professional to talk to about it once I've moved. Shall do.

 

every time i've switched medications, the doctor has me cut down on the old one, taking half my normal dose for two weeks, while i start on half the normal dose of the new one for two weeks. it's usually ok to double up, as you're weaning off one and starting on a new one. but DEFINITELY talk to your doctor to be sure, because some meds interact badly!

 

Okay, I've been on Prozac and it's giving me some really weird dreams. Or at the very least I'm remembering them with more frequency. Did that happen for anyone else?

 

i've never been on Prozac, but Lexapro gave me REALLY REALLY VIVID dreams.

 

I'm on Prozac and having very vivid dreams, several over the span of a night. Sometimes vaguely distressing, but not in a wake-up-sweating way, more in a "haha I hope I don't go back to that dream again" way.

 

ok, i'm preeeeeeeeetty sure at this point that interrupted sleep is turning out to be a side effect of the Buspar. it's happened 5 or 6 times in the past 2 weeks, where i'll fall asleep just fine... but then wake up around 2am and not be able to fall back asleep for 2+ hours. i have a prescription for Trazodone, which definitely can put me out all night, but i don't want to have to take it every single night.

i've only been on Buspar for about 5 weeks, and only on the full dose for 3, so maybe this will settle out eventually. i hope.

 

Got a docs appointment today, went in wanting to see if i needed to back off on the depakote or what, instead got my seroquel lowered and latuda added. Anyone have experience with it? Ive been on other antipsychotics and am currently enjoying the last grapefruit drink i will probably have in a while but aside from that and some googling i dont know much

 

So has anyone tried Welbutrin? I'm on it right now and I've started to notice I tremors. I keep dropping food when I try to eat because I can't balance my utensils. I have to hold certain things with two hands to avoid dropping them. Holding full drink cups is a not-fun time because liquid just won't stay in the damn cup. As nuts as this will sound, it kind of feels like even my jaw is trembling? I've noticed I choke on my food a lot more. The Welbutrin is really helping me overall, but the problem is I have trouble at work because A) I have to write, and that's really really hard with the trembling and B) I have to carry things - occasionally fragile things. Not good if my hands are not staying straight.

I've been on it for months and it's only sort of becoming noticeable now. I can go see my psychiatrist with an emergency appointment if I need to, but I dont' know if this counts as an emergency.

 

Heyo I'm new to this thread as it might become relevant for me with all the new meds I'm starting to experience.

Basically I experienced a lot of nausea and dizziness and a huge shift in my sense of reality and motion in the beginning of the month (it might be vertigo, but i'm just.. not sure). Blood, chest and brain tests all came back normal so the conclusion was that anxiety's causing it all despite the fact i never experienced such a phenomenon in my life and I've had anxiety since... middle/high school?

This resulted in an emergency room visit and many following doctor appointments because of course, I was getting concerned. ER perscribed hydroxyzine 25 MG and ondansteron 4 MG for anxiety and nausea, neither of them did anything and the hydroxyzine in particular made my dizziness much worse.

So a doctor gave me buspirone 10 MG and I was naturally skeptical but within the first few hours of taking it I was already feeling a difference. I had a headache but I went to bed feeling closer to normal again and found relief for the first time since my symptoms began, thank god. I was no longer repulsed by food and nausea disappeared almost completely, only felt it again during moments when I felt extremely nervous. I gained headaches more often too, blugh, but I'm more used to them so I'd rather just deal. it at least helped me tolerate driving and moving around a little more again too.

with another visit to the doctor my mom revealed to the doctor that i tend to cry a lot, and uncontrollably so when I do (it's true but..) so the doctor perscribed citalopram (celexa) to me.
The first 48 hours I was on celexa were HELL. I tensed up a lot and felt very nauseous, to the point where I thought I was going to throw up at any moment (despite never doing so..). My anxiety spiked and I was so restless the first night taking it that I couldn't fall asleep, and my hands and legs were especially very, very restless and I couldn't stop moving them because the feeling was so awful. That went on for the whole next day. I was tired and cranky that day and had an agonizing panic attack that took a while to stop.. i was at least able to get to sleep that night. For the third day I just. felt tired, the whole day. It's been half a week now since I started taking that (20 MG each night) and the side effects aren't as intense and agonizing as they were when I first started on it, thank god. But I still feel sick quite a bit.. and I'm yawning a LOT since starting on celexa. Every time i yawn too the slight lump in my throat makes me feel nauseous again too. I still sort of have the vertigo too. I'll often lay down and will notice the room swaying a little.

I've had the trembling body and hands happening too since starting on celexa. I'm really glad that's an actual common side effect with antidepressants and that i'm not alone, I was really concerned when it started happening. I'm going to give this medication more time to "take effect" as the doctor said but so far I'm not a fan due to the side effects so far.. I haven't been working lately due to how bad I started to feel and I so very much wish I could feel normal again. I feel like I sound like a baby writing all this because I'm relatively new to the meds experience here.

 

I've been getting a lot of migraines recently, so my doctor is switching me to Cymbalta.

My stomach was already a piece of crap; now I am nauseous enough I mistook it for a flu and stayed home from work on Wednesday. I've eaten mostly toast and yogurt for the last three days. I'm supposed to up the dosage tonight but I'm...not really sure I want to...

 

So, I accidentally did a withdrawal from my Ritalin, because I derped and didn't get it refilled. In my defense, I didn't realize I was getting super low until I was super low, and by that point I was on the opposite side of the country from my home pharmacy and any doctors I could go to for a new prescription. (I have since gotten a new prescription, with three refills on it. It should do me through to December, according to the doc.) And then once I did get home, getting to the clinic for a new prescription ended up not happening for various reasons, so I just got the prescription from the doctor who wrote the last one when I went in for an appointment with him. I did learn that I can just email him for new prescriptions, if I run out, and also that he's planning on retiring either at the end of this year or sometime next year - he is 91, so it's not surprising; it also explains why he tried to nudge me back towards the GP he thought I had, instead of making any more appointments, because diagnosing and doing a couple of trial prescriptions is one thing, but taking on a new patient is an entirely different thing and not really compatible with trying to close up shop.

So, I ended up going without Ritalin from August 27th to September 6th. It wasn't as awful as I was thinking it was going to be? But it still sucked. I was exhausted all the time, and trying to get anything done was hard.

I'm back on my meds now, but at a lower dose than previously; I was taking two 20 mg slow-release pills in the morning, and two 10 mg rapid-release pills spread out throughout the rest of the day (one about three or four hours after the morning dose, and the second one around 6 pm) before I ran out, but I'd been messing around with my dosages and had been taking one of the 20 mg pills instead of both, and I'd stopped taking the 10 mgs about a week or two before the cross-country trip because I was down to three pills left and didn't have a refill on the prescription (and couldn't spoons enough for going "okay, I need to go to the clinic and get a new prescription for this or contact the psych doctor").

My sleep schedule is completely messed up, and I'm still tired and getting the energy to want to do anything besides sit and watch TV on my computer or play Minecraft is really hard right now. I don't know if that's because of the withdrawal, the dosage shenanigans, or something else entirely. (I mean, depression isn't impossible.) I'm figuring I'll start a thread for help on how to cope with adult ADD, because holy crap, am I realizing I don't actually have any idea of how to coping skills here.

 

when i started on Buspar, i got bad vertigo for like 7-10 days. then when i went from 5mg to 10mg, i got bad vertigo. my medication nurse recently increased my dosage again, to 15mg, but said that since i had been taking it for a few months now, hopefully i won't see the same side effects.

WELP today i started on the 15mg, aaaaaaaaand... vertigo. -_- which sucks, but also i'm supposed to drive across the state tomorrow. but i don't want to drive, certainly not on the highway, if i'm having vertigo! but i've been saying i'd do this (helping my uncle with a project) for like, 6 weeks, but stuff keeps coming up. i don't want to put it off again, but... i also don't want to drive for 3+ hours with spinning vision.

 

wow, after a month of not taking my meds consistently, taking them consistently for a week has drastically improved my mental health! who'da thunk?

 

Saw this post by @roach , and anecdata: I've got the "depression on top of structural brainweird that causes executive dysfunction" thing, and Prozac made my mood skyrocket so I was no longer living in as thick of a cloud of malnourished misery when I first got on it, but once I got out of the initial pit I plateaued and my functionality did not significantly increase (because depression wasn't what was causing those problems). Most of my later crashes back into the pit were because of the still-untreated executive dysfunction- e.g. because I was expected to handle refilling my meds on my own and forgot to and cold-turkeyed, or because I forgot to do a bunch of schoolwork and that snowballed.