How long did it take for your AP to work?

I had a bad time yesterday / last night. I think it may have been mostly from triggered anxiety, as my mother and her husband left for their vacation last evening, they’ll be gone for a while in Mexico. They were still here though when it started. The entities started talking to me inside of my mind, and they were in an antagonizing mood. The world did not look right and things started to looking they were pulsating. I had to use the restroom, and when I saw myself in the mirror, one of them was looking at me through my own face, and said, “I see you.” I quickly rebuffed it with an irritated, “Well I see you, too,” and walked away. Then I saw my dog in the living room, and it was looking at me through my dog.

That was when I made the call to take one of my left over Olanzapine pills. When it starts to affect my dog, that’s a line in the sand for me, because I love my dog dearly and don’t want him involved in this. Now I only have 2 pills left, though.

But when I take one of these pills in what feels like an emergency situation, it doesn’t make things stop. It just makes me feel so sedated that it’s like I’m too tired and out of it to care about what is happening. Then I inevitably fall asleep and sleep for like 14 hours, which of course is nice. Don’t have to deal with anything if I’m asleep, after all.

When I woke up this morning it was very sunny (still is). The sunshine and calmness around me makes things feel like everything is back to normal, I have no anxiety. Not sure how much of this is from the pill, and how much is because I got some good sleep, calmed down and now it’s sunny. Probably both.

But it worries me that the pills don’t stop the phenomena from happening, just makes me too sedated to get worked up over it. I see the new therapist again tomorrow, and I’m not sure how long I have to see her before the facility lets me have access to the psychiatrist. Then I will have to wait while trying a new medication, for it to kick in.

So I am wondering how long it took for you guys, before your medication actually worked and cleared things up? It always suck trying a new medication and dealing with the side effects, being like a mindless, drooling zombie all the time, and just having ‘faith’ that eventually things will get better.

For me it happens pretty quickly. Between a few hours and a couple of days, I think. I hope you realize these entities are just in your mind. They are not affecting your dog, they are just affecting you, and it’s your mind playing tricks on you. I know they feel real, but I hope you know they are not.

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I always know they are not real at first, but I’ve had a few times in my life where I guess I just got so run down mentally that I lost that insight, and bad things happened, like becoming homeless and so on. I just find it unnerving that the medication doesn’t make them stop, just makes me so sedated and out of it that I don’t care about them, and then I fall asleep. I would like to think that if I was on a medication long enough, that eventually it would work, but not sure. I was on Olanzapine for several weeks, several months ago, and I can’t recall what exactly it was like because it made my memory and focus so poor. I guess it’s just a little frightening when the only solution that seems to be left is meds, and then the pill doesn’t work.

I’m sorry you have suffered so much because of your psychosis, but glad you know it’s not real most of the time. I have read a lot of posts here from people who said it took a while for the meds to work. Often months. But there is also a section of the sz population who do not come out of psychosis with meds, they are treatment resistant. Hopefully you are not treatment resistant and it just takes longer for you to get better with meds.

Yeah hopefully. It really sucks to be on them if they are not even working. Especially since they make me feel drunk and I lose my brain-to-mouth filter pretty quickly.

Like last night when my mother and her husband were leaving, they shut all the lights off in the house like I wasn’t even there, and I would have just been left sitting there in the dark. So without even thinking I said, “Why are you shutting all the lights off like I’m not even here?” And they both acted offended like I was being awkward/difficult.

So I not only become a zombie but also have a harder time getting along with my parents. Not really worth it if it’s not even working.

I understand your frustration, but remember to always talk it over with a doctor before you quit meds. The doctor should know if you’ve been on them long enough to know that they won’t eventually start working. They could also switch your meds to see if a different pill works better or has more tolerable side-effects. Trust your doctor when it comes to the meds. But in the end it is your choice if you want to be on meds or not.

for me they start to work within a few hours but I don’t feel the full effect of them until a few months have passed,

Two weeks on Abilify to feel better. A month before the paranoia is gone.

Haldol is spectacular. Take a florridly psychotic person in the ER and give said person a shot of Haldol, and in less than an hour that person will be talking in a way that makes sense. The side effects of Haldol are notorious, however.

I take Trilafon (aka Perphenazine). Trilafon is not spectacular. In my case in takes greater than am month to get the effect of Trilafon. But the side effect profile is nicer than Haldol.

When I was psychotic, the anxiety definitely made the experience worse. Trilafon is not only an antipsychotic, but also it is an antianxiety.

Incidentally, the half life for the antipsychotic effect of Trilafon is measured in weeks, but the antianxiety effect lasts about 6 hours.

Jayster

The Seroquel kicked in pretty fast…

When the meds were getting altered and tweaked… It only took a few weeks to get some energy back and start feeling plugged back in to life…

It took a month or so for me to notice the voices let up a bit… still there but not as negative… to get a grip on the sneaky brained thinking.

I am on resperidol. not sure i spelled it correctly. it started to have positive effects within a few days. i am slowly getting my dose increased and with that i am slowly feeling better. I have a long way to go, but i am doing a lot better than i was before meds. started around 1 month ago

Hey @Turnip don’t quit the meds. For me it took months for my shot to work, but eventually did. Do you take them every day or just in emergencies? That may be a reason for them not to work so well.

Zyprexa does very little for me, but it’s a great SOS when I needed it.

A few months ago there was this huge conflict here at the forum and my symptoms started acting up. I took a zyprexa and went to bed, spent all day next day sedated but the symptoms calmed down.

When I was taking it as precribed regularly it helped my delusions fade, but I was still very confused.

I was always taking it with another injectable, first Haldol at the hospital then Invega when I came out.

Don’t quit, take it and you’ll get better eventually.

When you talk to your therapist tell her about this. Can she prescribe medication?

I was Zyprexa for several weeks but several months ago. The pdoc I had at the time wanted me to take Abilify, but I was too scared to take it due to the common side effects of restlessness and agitation (which I was already struggling with, among other things). So she said I could try another med, but that if it didn’t work, then I’d have to take the Abilify. So she let me try Zyprexa, but she told me that if I gained weight on it, then she’d make me switch to Abilify. Well I could not stop gaining weight on it, it just kept piling onto me, and every appointment she would threaten to make me switch if I couldn’t stop gaining weight. I wanted to try something else, anyway, because the Zyprexa was making my memory and focus very poor (or so it seemed). Then I got a job offer, first place to call me in over a year. So out of desperation for the job, I stopped the meds to try to get my memory/focus back, but I didn’t go back to the pdoc anymore because I knew she would just make me take Abilify. But I kept my leftover Zyprexa pills, they are 10mg pills and I had about 10 left. I have been popping them whenever I feel I am becoming unhinged, to make me calm down and just go to sleep. But now I only have 2 left.

I was upfront with my new therapist about my previous non-compliance issues, but explained why I was afraid to take the Abilify. She asked me if I was willing to try meds again, and I said yes, but I want a pdoc who will take my concerns seriously.

I have been on Olanzapine (Zyprexa) for nearly 10 years. When I first started taking it it took a few months for the sedation to wear off and for me to feel more myself but this was after a relapse so I had to recover from that also. They say if you don’t take the meds regularly as prescribed you don’t feel the full benefit. I can understand that maybe Ability does not agree with you. We are all different and different meds affect us differently. I hope you find a med soon that can give you relief. In my experience if you explain to your psychiatrist that a med does not agree with you they will change it if they believe you have given it a chance

Missed this part. No she can not, she has a master’s degree but in psychology only. There is a psychiatrist at the facility. The way it works is that you have to be seeing one of their therapists before you can have access to the psychiatrist.

I just don’t want to be taking something that is just a tranquilizer. I feel its effects within the hour of taking it, so I know it is doing its thing. But its thing seems to be making me extremely out of it and drowsy, but doesn’t stop those experiences from happening. They just keep on rolling while I become increasingly too sedated to care. If that is all it’s gonna do, I could just get drunk for cheaper.

Like basically what I’m trying to ask is, if you take an AP, and it makes you very drowsy and out of it, but doesn’t stop psychosis-like symptoms from happening, does that mean the medication doesn’t work for you, or is that fairly normal for X amount of time? From some responses here, it seems for some it took a couple months on average before their psychosis started to go away?

It varies for me. Haldol works in 2 hours. Trilafon took forever. Zyprexa worked in a day, maybe 2. Seroquel never worked. This stuff I’m on now - Thorazine - has taken 4 weeks to start doing something. It chilled me out in about an hour, but to work on the voices and paranoia, it took a lot longer. This is my last hurrah. The Thorazine will be raised and raised until it works, with maybe 2000 mg being the ceiling. Yes, 2000. If it doesn’t work, I might be a candidate for some radical psychosurgery. That’s where I’m at.

Often with any medication - right away. Within the first day. I’ve watched this happen the few times my mother has been medicated with psych drugs.

Risperdal helped me in a few months it didnt take everything away he then put me on latuda and that really hasnt helped me

No offense meant at all here, but it’s not something you can actually watch. Just because someone stops telling you things, doesn’t mean the things are not there anymore.