Hey, thanks for reading this. I am schizophrenic or having schizoaffective disorder and taking Abilify. The positive symptoms stopped but I am struggling hard with the negative ones. During the day I can’t get out of bed, I feel very tired when doing any kind of activity, I am not really able to keep up a conversation or showing emotions. My quality of life is very low due to these negative symptoms and I wonder if any of you taking Abilify has experienced any improvements of the negative symptoms taking an add-on drug. I also might consider to switch from Abilify to another AP.
Abilify made everything seem to slow to a crawl for me, my pdocs had hailed it as the “energizing” med that I needed to kick me out of my funk. A year and a half I waited, tried different doses, scheduled and kept hoping for life to return. I now think they thought I was lying to them trying to get?? when I kept complaining it made me sleep a lot and I was always tired.
They weren’t happy it wasn’t the miracle cure and finally switched me to Geodon. Although I was groggy about an hour after waking up, this became my favorite med.
I continued for a couple more years on it until I had to stop it due to a high prolactin level.
I take 315 mg aripiprazole + 38mg perphenazine + 25 mg clozapine for my psychosis and lack of motivation, my performance, motivation and emotions is even better than normal people except 10 hours of sleeping, I use other mads too : chlordiazepoxide: 35 mg for my breathing problems and nortriptilin : 310 mg for my psychotic pain, for the first step a low dose of clozapine can help you alot. as a general advice: be an active patient and work on your meds with cooperation of your psychiatrist until you find the right meds and right combination.
Thanks to csummers and aliali for your feedback. My psychiatrist suggested today to go up from 10 to 15mg Abilify. I talked to him, but he does not feel comfortable about experimenting with the medication. He is more the talking guy than the med guy.
I will talk to another psychiatrist, whom I know. Two years ago we tried Wellbutrin and another antidepressivum, but it would not work. Maybe I can suggest to try Geodon or another antipsychoticum as csummers suggested, although I am not too pleased by the idea to take more than one AP. So, aliali, do you think clozapine helped you more with the negative symptoms than aripiprazole? I read on wiki it is only indicated if other choices of AP have failed. Do you have to monitor your blood values for the risk of Agranulocytosis taking Clozapine? So, you are taking 3 kinds of APs simultaneously, wow. What does 3* mean, not three times per day 15 mg Abilify. This would be way too much, no?
I will discuss with my new psychiatrist what options I have, but I am not really sure in which direction to start to experiment.
Greetings,
ear
sorry @ear, because you didnt use @ I didnt notice your question of me, yes by 3* I mean three times a day, the usual dose of aripiprazole for SZ is 30mg per day , aripiprazole helps me by running my thoughts’ current and gives me the ability of thinking, clozapine helps me by giving me the power of will and motivation, and perphenazine helps me with my psychotic pain and boosts my breathing, take care