Being Mentally Normal: The Theory and The Actuality

[Mitchy1nge]

we must be on part 11 or something by now?

Only other bedroom is a boxroom full of utter crap vitally important possessions, which I haven't been in for months as the door is blocked with said crap possessions. Good suggestion though

No snow here I have no excuse not to go running. Except my sore toe and the fact that both of my sports bras are in the washing machine.

No snow here which is good news because it turns my car into an ice skate and I need to get to work in the morning. There is some forecast for Wednesday though.

It's stopped now here, which is probably due to me telling everyone about it. It's forecast all week, except today so I have hope we might get it somewhen.

enpo it's too cold for a run. Just do some star jumps or something.

I should have ridden big grey horse today but it was too cold. I went and gave him a cuddle instead. I've finally got my arse in gear and got the pork in the oven so at least I've achieved something today.

Does anyone else struggle with sedation? I hate feeling so sleepy til 2pm each day (then I perk up).

I struggle massively with getting out of bed thanks to quetiapine but it burns off once I'm up and showered.

Are you having problems snowy?

I could stay in bed till midday, and I blame it on the medication, but i don't know how much of it is the current depression or laziness, if that makes sense!

I know if I take the quetiapine later (ie after 10pm) then I sleep a lot later, and so I ought to try having it earlier.

One of the reasons I was struggling at work was the getting up and getting in on time.

I made myself stay awake yesterday and today (because of the carers coming at different times) - was very sleepy until 2pm. Usually I have a morning nap.

I hate it, but olanzapine, aripiprazole and quetiapine didn't work well for me, so there's no other choice as far as I'm told.

If I take the clozapine any earlier I get tired before bed time.

I don't have excessive daytime sleepiness on phenelzine, but once I'm asleep, I'm staying that way IYSWIM - I'm unwakeable for the next 9-10 hours, and drowsy for a couple of hours after that. Oddly, once I have taken the phenelzine, I get a bit of a buzz off it for a few hours. Maybe I should get DP to bring me it in bed earlier in the morning. It's an odd mix of sedating and stimulating.

I do remember that I was very drowsy on quetiapine and stelazine, less so on olanzapine, and not at all on risperidone. Not sure if there's anything you can so, really - doctors don't seem to take it seriously

When I told the psychiatrist that I had restless legs at night and was drowsy in the morning on quetiapine he doubled the dose with the hope that the change would fix it!
I love him, but I was skeptical how taking more of a medication could make me feel less tired!

If it's any consolation Caulk the longer you take quetiapine the less sedating it becomes. I was like a zombie when I started on it at first.

The first antipsychotic I ever took (except for emergency buttock haldol) was stelazine - I think it was just to make all subsequent neuroleptics seem less bad in comparison Seriously, who prescribes a 17 year old stelazine spansules as a first line treatment in the 21st century?

I think sometimes the combined effect of several drugs can be kind of mutiplicative with them all enhancing each other's drowsiness-inducing properties.

Did it work, Caulk?

Stelazine?? What were they thinking? Idiots.

That is reassuring, thanks. I've gone from 25mg to 50 to now 100mg over the last 8 weeks, which isn't very high I know, and it's better than just zopiclone which I was on before.

It makes me sleep better, and the restless legs happen for less time as I fall asleep quicker, so I guess it does work!

I used to take 750mg of quetiapine, the side effects definitely wore off.

I take 800mg and function well enough.

I had assumed that going up to 100 was the maximum dose or something, then looked online and realised how low it is!

Stelazine is part of the reason I react the way I do when people use the word "nutter" - despite taking procyclidine, I used to be very stiff and move in an odd way, twisting my hands and mouth around, and people would call me a fucking nutter. Nice.

Maybe he was onto something, Caulk

It's a shame so many of the psych meds are so sedating. The few stimulating ones there are seem to be very unpopular with prescribers. A cynical person might suggest it is for patient management reasons as much as clinical ones

He is brilliant. Good old Freud. I live under a low level of fear he will move me onto someone else, but he doesn't seem to be. Other than the one I met in hospital, he is the only person to treat me like an adult, and not just as a patient who is a bit incapable and needs pacifying.

I had to change psychs when they created two teams, one for people who need a few sessions of input or less, and the other for long term treatment. (I may have got the roles not quite right, it was all to do with clustering(?))

The non-sedating antipsychotics tend to be the newer and more expensive ones hence the reliance on the old favourites.

Yeah, I ed at my cluster a bit

It's a more general pattern, though, Mental - how come dopey dozey phenelzine is still prescribed, but the more stimulating tranylcypromine is so vanishingly rarely prescribed that it costs a fortune? Which then, of course, prevents people prescribing it.

Would aripiprazole count as one of the less-sedating neuroleptics? I was offered that (and told it had a much better side-effect profile than all the other atypicals I'd tried before and wouldn't effect my blood sugar).

Affect! ----