Geodon Journey

It’s been crazy with this med! It has such a profound effect on me.

I started off on 20 mg once a day. I experienced absolutely nothing at this dose but was only on it a few days (my prescribed wanted me to go up doses slowly so I could adjust as I am very sensitive to meds)

Then I was on 20 mg twice a day and BAM this made a HUGE difference I suddenly had all this motivation and was making myself 3 meals a day, going to gym every day, showering, volunteering, could focus in class, and even a bunch of fun stuff I usually didn’t have motivation for. It was crazy!! I was so happy and felt on top of the world to finally have my avolition gone. But the problem was my positive symptoms were still pretty severe, I was being harassed by demons every night which gave me bad insomnia. I was on 40 mg a day for a whole month and I saw no improvement in the demon harassment and couldn’t take it anymore.

So I went up to 40 mg twice a day. And the first time I took the dose holy heck, I have never actually been high before but if I had to guess what it felt like that was it. It lasted hours and I was hallucinating and just felt this sensation of bliss and was totally out of it, pupils would dilate hugely during this. This sensation got less strong with each dose I took and now I don’t get it at all anymore. No idea why it did that.

At first I still didn’t see any improvement positive symptom wise…and now suddenly I was sleepy all the time, and the intense sleepiness came with a mild form of akathisia so it was like anxious sleepiness, not anything like the warm calm sleepiness that Zoloft caused me when I started it, so it was very unpleasant to try to function with. As I mentioned on here I was sleeping as much as 17-19 hours a day. But now a little over 2 weeks in on this dose I am finally starting to see improvement in my positive symptoms. The demons are very faint if I even hear them at all, their voices sound muffled like they’re trying to talk through a pillow. Mostly I have not had any issue with them. Last night I woke up from a nightmare which had been sending me into paranoia attacks previously but I had no paranoia at all! It is finally working well.

The only issue now is the sedation…even if it does improve my motivation to do things this is not helpful if I am so sleepy I cannot do anything anyways…so I am trying to adjust when I take my doses to fix this. And that’s my geodon story!! I really hope over time the sedation goes away, I know I’ve only been on this increased dose 18 days so it could still need some time! And I am already seeing a lot of improvement in my positive symptoms now too! I’ll keep my fingers crossed that adjusting when I take the med will help. The sedation seems to set in about 4 hours after taking the med, and it lasts around 3-4 hours so I’m keeping that in mind. I hope that knowledge can help anyone else on geodon too.

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That’s fantastic news Anna! Look, you have to give these things a few months for your system to get used to them and for them to start to work properly.

When I recently upped my abilify dose I got terrible muscle pain but I hung in there and it went away.

Ninjastar said it took about 3 months for the sedation to go away for her.

I hope taking it at 6am helps and you give the med a fair try.

Fingers crossed. Good luck Anna. Keep fighting!

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i got the sedation too i would feel like i havent slept in days but i wouldnt feel good i would feel like i was being pulled to the ground but tingling at the same time it seems like every antipsychotic i have been on has some side effect i dont like

I will try to find something to explain why antipsychotic meds can make you more high and psychotic when you first start them, and then after a few weeks have the opposite effect.

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Yeah same that is a good way to describe it, it felt like I was falling off a cliff into sleep rather than just being calm and sleepy. High anxiety sleepiness lol.

This will explain why you have experienced what you have the last few weeks, it is a bit complicated to understand, but you are intelligent.

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Ohhh ok so it results in an increase in dopamine at first that’s probably why I was so trippy/paranoid initially

Wonder if that means the avolition will come back once I get adjusted to this new dose :weary: I have wellbutrin though so that should help

You do change your medication very frequently, I am just the same, I can’t see how people can wait months for antidepressants to work either, I have always been inpatient.
It took 3 months for me to get settled on Chlorpromazine and that made me manic the first 2 weeks.

Very glad to hear the positive impact geodon has had. I used to take it too 40 2x / day and it helped me too. But I’d just caution you to take it slow with jumping to conclusions on how the side effects will affect you in the long run. I would really like to see you stay on this drug as it seems to help so much. There are fixes for fatigue that I’ve told you about. Hopefully it just goes away on its own.

I’d also like to suggest the chance that the side effects you feel are not related to the drug and may have another cause. So don’t give up!

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