Posted by mair on April 5, 2001, at 21:13:56
In reply to serzone dose, posted by allisonm on April 5, 2001, at 18:03:51
>I've been on serzone for about 6 or 7 weeks and I've really had a bad time with it. My doc wanted me to start on 100 mgs for only about a day and then up it to a divided dose of 200 mgs. I titrated it much more slowly based on some stuff I read on this board and I still had an awful time with side effects. I felt cognitively impaired; I had trouble with some motor functions; I couldn't sleep very well; and I felt incredibly sluggish during the day. I became very depressed and felt emotionally dead. Things got so bad that I became obsessively suicidal, and my therapist started raising the issue of a hospital stay. It's not at all clear to me whether I got so depressed as a side effect to the meds, or as a reaction to the side effects. I was so fatigued, and each day felt shorter because I had no energy to do anything. My pdoc switched so that I took all 200 mgs at night. This made a huge difference in how I felt during the day. I frequently take clonopin at night also. I have to be careful, because I can have alot of trouble getting up in the morning. However once I force myself out of bed and start moving around, I lose that foggy feeling.
The jury is still out on this drug - I've noticed no therapuetic effect, but at least the side effects are not as much of an issue anymore. I want to stick with it to see if I can get some anti=depressant effect, but given my recent experience, I'm trying to be diligent about the side effects too. I've recently upped my dose to 250 mgs taken at night, and I'll go up to 300 as soon as I'm sure I can handle 250. Good luck - you may have to go through a fairly lengthy adjustment period, but I'm hoping it'll prove to have been worth it.
Mair (fna ksvt)
poster:mair
thread:58726
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20010403/msgs/58857.html