Posted by sheilac on April 22, 2011, at 7:52:54
In reply to Re: Antipsychotic side effects?, posted by bleauberry on April 21, 2011, at 17:18:30
I was afraid to try prozac for the very reason that it would cause mania, but I have noticed the exact opposite reaction. I take prozac in the afternoon and it actually calms me down and helps my sleep - as well as slight depression and irritability. Must be the serotonin effect I need. At my next doc visit I will be going up a little on the prozac.
I take a small dose of nuvigil in the morning to help with energy and focus. I tend to have low energy and I think that causes some irritability too. I have tried Adderall but even in low doses it causes me to go manic.
I also think that maybe I am a rapid cycler and the Adderall just made that worse.
> My opinion is that normal dosing instructions are only a rough guideline and that the actual dose needs to be tailored to the individual, as judged by the individual's reaction to different doses. The body talks, we just have to listen to what it is saying. In your case it is saying going to 50mg from 25mg is bad. But...it could be down the road maybe 50mg is great....but probably won't go that way with one huge jump of 100% increase from the previous dose. For some of us the body takes longer to adjust, or reacts violently to being tweeked too much too fast, so we have to tone it down by attempting dose increases in smaller steps. 25mg to 30mg for example, accomplished by various methods of making custom sized doses out of the capsules or tablets.
>
> Just a gut hunch, but of all your meds to increase I would probably have my eye on prozac more than seroquel. For bipolar? Yeah. I know that bucks the conventional census. Most clinicians would say an ssri increase would destabilize a bipolar patient. But I've seen them work good when the conventional census meds didn't. Everything in psychiatry is general consensus, opinion, and all of it unproven theory, so each patient, each med, and each dose change is an experiment with an unpredictable outcome. Trial and error is the only way to discover the proper road to be on. Having failures or duds along that journey have to be expected. Sometimes, as in my case, a lot of them.
>
> In any case, I'm all in support of what you are doing I just think that whatever you do needs to be done in much smaller steps. Which means making your own custom sized doses.
poster:sheilac
thread:983448
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20110418/msgs/983499.html