I’m on a lower dose than before
What dose of what med were you on and what are you on now?
5mg for a couple of weeks but now that’s reduced to the same dose every other day abilify
That’s 5mg every other day instead of every day?
I have a problem with whoever told you to do that.
That’s not okay, you don’t cut a dose in half like that. These meds really screw us up if we don’t take them.
Yeah the obvious explanation is withdrawals from a major tranquilizer.
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My psychiatrist said I could do this as you can’t get 2.5mg Abilify
Cut the 5mg in half. Pill splitters are sold at every pharmacy. Is it a pill or capsule?
It’s a pill. I guess I could try that. Damn this is the first night I haven’t been able to sleep and have all these thoughts going through my mind.
Like I’m all happy and giddy one minute and rational the next it makes no sense
I suggest you cut the pill in half as precisely as you can and take one of the halves. That should help for now. I suggest you buy a pill splitter tomorrow so this doesn’t happen again. Really 5mg to 2.5 isn’t that big of a withdrawal but 5mg to 0 is!
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Abilify is a difficult pill to cut in half, unless you get a special pill cutter.
I’d stick with what the doctor said.
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I believe half life of abilify is 75 hours and maybe that’s why they reduced the dose to every other day to taper it.
Ask the doc whenever you have a question.
Well yes the med may have a longer half life but her brain is so used to the med at the same time every day. Sort of like how certain medicines must be stopped two weeks before surgery- they might not be kicking but they are technically in your blood. Also, the half life is when it’s completely gone- we want steady levels of meds in us- the same reason they often inject patients with lipids mixed with the medication- to slow and steady the blood level of the drug.
The half life is when it is about Half gone.
“While a radioactive isotope decays perfectly according to first order kinetics where the rate constant is fixed, the elimination of a substance from a living organism, into the environment, follows more complex kinetics”. From wiki
Just follow your doctors advice or get a second opinion from another MD. Yes messing with doses can be tricky. Hope you feel better @anon80629714
Well the half life is a rate at which it decays. A drug can be in a half life and be 99% gone. Lets not argue and instead wish the original poster luck. It’s in her best interest to take 2.5 a day, I know that for a fact and she should do that because hey look she’s in withdrawal and suffering.
Let’s not give instructions that contradict a doctor.
The body will process and eliminate “half” of the blood concentration of the drug every “half-life” period. The more drug present in the bloodstream, the more that is processed and eliminated. To put it another way, for every “half-life” period, the amount of drug in the system is reduced by 50%.
Well, what you said about half lives is true, and it proved my previous point. Thanks!
I hate to say it, but docs aren’t always right. A great doc prescribed me an anti naseau med yesterday which would have killed me had I not read the label and looked up the interaction of it with Geodon. Prolonged QT interval is a little thing about Geodon that can be really deadly.
If I hadn’t been such a smart ass and read the fine print that came with the med and then disobeyed the doctor by not taking the med, I would probably be dead!
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A med with a half life of over 3 days (abilify) will exit a person’s body slower than one with a half life of 7 hours. Seroquel.
It also affects how long it takes to achieve a peak plasma concentration of the medication.
The steady state concentration of Abilify may drop off much slower than something like Seroquel.
Can you skip a day when tritrating down and still maintain a good blood plasma level?
So until you do the math you have not proved it.
Steady State Concentration= (F x Dose) / (CL T)
Where,
F = Fractional bioavailability of the dose. (in percentage %)
Dose in mg/70Kg.
CL = Clearance from systemic circulation. (in L/hr/70Kg)
T = dose interval (in hours).
The units of steady state concentration are mg/L
On this we can agree, as I don’t follow my doc’s instructions to the letter. They can be wrong or forget stuff.
But when I bullheadedly ignore their instructions, I may end up dead or at least fired or retired one day.
I don’t believe in obeying anyone other than God.
But usually He works in tandem with the Docs to help us.
Withdrawal can cause inability to sleep.
Withdrawals can cause terrible things. My dr told me to go off geodon. I thought he meant cold turkey. So I was shaking & had this unexplainable feeling in my head. It was bad.
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