Experimenting with when to take medication

[Anna]

I’ve been playing around with when I take Vraylar recently. It actually doesn’t seem to make me sleepy at night anymore like it did initially. So I think the sleepiness the next day may actually be because it disrupts my normal sleep so that it is not restful. I started taking it earlier at night rather than shortly before I go to sleep and that seems to improve my ability to wake up and the drowsiness. I will skip my dose tonight and take it in the morning tomorrow & see if this helps.

I think it may suppress REM as I don’t really have dreams on it, and it also causes me to wake up several times a night. It’s also recently started causing me to have a very dry throat, which I feel wakes me up now as well as I have to keep drinking water and then that makes me have to use the bathroom. I think this would not be as big a deal during the day.

Wish me luck! Hope this works!

[everhopeful]

Vraylar is a bit like abilify in that it’s “activating” rather than sedating. So taking it in the morning is probably best.

But you should probably take it at the exact same time everyday. If I don’t take abilify at the exact same time every day (give or take an hour) I get vivid dreams.

[Anna]

Yes that is the goal, right now though I’m trying to figure out what time of day will be best for me.

I only started taking it at night because it made me sleepy initially when I raised my dose but now it doesn’t anymore so I think I’ll go back to morning and so long as that goes well I’ll stick with it unfortunately like you say whenever I have skipped a dose or messed with timing I’ve gotten breakthrough symptoms. When I take it regularly it works pretty awesome!