Diagnosed with schizophrenia for more than 12 years now. Have been on 5mg abilify daily and cogentin for about a few years now with no voices and no hallucinations. 3 weeks ago, I forgot to take medications for 3 days. Suddenly gone into a “relapse” with positive and negative symptoms like hallucinations, paranoia, grandiose, anxiety, voices, and smelling things that my family says is not there (i.e., smelling gas, but my family says that there is no gas leak anywhere!!) … Even though I have been consistent with meds for the past 2.5 weeks , I still cannot differentiate from what is real and what is not real… How long does it take for abilify 5mg to work to make the voices go away?
Going to see my mental health center to see my psych doc in a few days. Do you think increase of 10mg abilify would make these negative and positive symptoms go away? Or will I have to ask my doc for another med?
10mg of Abilify is the minimum dose to treat psychosis.
5 mg is like taking a placebo, it does nothing except maybe as an add on to help augment antidepressants.
Oh wow, so I was good on the placebo then it seems like. That’s very positive to hear, especially since the only things I was on was 5mg abilify and congentin for the tremors, daily for both respectively. Hopefully my doc will prescribe the 10mg abilify or something else to get me back on track.
Ever since I got back on my regimen the last 2.5 weeks, the voices have gotten more quiet but they are still there, and I still “smell” gas and hallucinate… I just cannot wait til the voices go away like before.
If you don’t mind me asking, was 15mg the lowest dose you have gone? The lowest dose I have gone for abilify is 5mg and that worked for a couple of years until I forgot to take meds and now my symptoms are back…
5mg abilify is too a low dose.I was on 5mg for many years,it’s not enough because abilify is lighter.I am on 5mg Olanzapine which is one fourth of the highest dose,it’s good enough but I gain a lot of weight.Abilify Highest dose is 30mg
I was on olanzapine many many years ago and I gained a lot of weight and had thinning of hair/hair loss. Abilify made me lose a lot of weight but hair thinning too… Doc changed me from olanzapine to abilify because I had a good handle on my symptoms… But now… I don’t know… I just want my hallucinations and paranoia to go away… I keep thinking that people are outside with guns and that someone’s watching me inside my house. I can’t even shower… And I keep hearing voices from a female voice who is “god”…
How many milligrams or time wise did you realize abilify was doing more harm than good in terms of worsening your psychosis? What happened afterwards? Prescribed a new med?
Both 5mg and 10mg worsen my paranoia DTR. Im stable on clozapine but after relapse abilify started giving me paranoia.
Before relapse i could only tolerate upto 10mg abilify. On 15mg i slept whole day. On 10mg i still had paranoia and delusions. So pdoc stopped abilify and shifted me to clozapine and since then life has been good. Its been 6 years on clozapine.