Went off abilify as I couldn’t tolerate it. Went cold turkey for about 6 weeks, eventually withdrawal got to me, and just now went back on a 5mg dose which is sub therapeutic.
Hopefully it’s enough to get rid of the withdrawal until I get to see my pdoc next month. It won’t be acting as an anti psychotic at that dose.
Actually, 5 mgs will produce an anti-P effect for many pts. What was your Rx’d dose level? What were the tolerance issues? (It’s often possible to at least partially get around them with diet and other lifestyle changes.)
I was on 10mg, the minimum therapeutic dose. I tried everything to tolerate it, I’m not prepared to experiment further. Once I needed benzos to tolerate it, the writing was on the wall.
I’ll see how it goes on 5mg, then increase to 7.5mg if that’s not working out, which is still sub therapeutic, and if that doesn’t work out, then I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried lots of other meds albeit briefly and abilify was the clear winner. I’m afraid to switch.
I don’t agree. At 5mg it kept my psychosis away for a long time. I had to increase not be coz of psychosis but coz of depression.
So you started taking it again because of withdrawals? Withdrawal would disappear after a while…
When my pdoc lowered my dose from 9 to 6mg of invega i had unpleasant withdrawals and they lasted for 10 days.
So, is it making you agitated? If so, I’d stay at 5 mgs, get to the doc and see if you can switch to Seroquel quetiapine which is sedating in direct relationship to the dose level. Which means you can probably find a dose level that quells the agitation without putting you to sleep.
If that doesn’t work, your doc may do well to go to polypharmacy to get a compressor effect… and then follow that up with psyhotherapy to locate and knock out the cognitive source of the agitation if there is one (and in sz, there almost always is).
Seroquel nearly killed me. I’m here simply because of luck. No joke. No exaggeration.
10 mg is when Abilify starts acting like an antipsychotic - 5 mg is really the dose for augmenting the effects of an antidepressant - but it may still have some antipsychotic activity.
Good luck with it @everhopeful - You might do well on 5 mg or at least 7.5 mg