Worth a shot losing my job soon so no risk of losing it
You’re only on 5mg of abilify. It’s not acting as an antipsychotic at that dose anyway. It might still be acting as an antidepressant though.
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Makes sense Ish, but beware the added stress of losing your job could make things worse
Best of luck. Here if you need us. 
Shada-biffer.
1515
I suggest discussing this with your pdoc.
If you do go off, wean yourself off slowly and don’t stop abruptly.
Yeah, as a warning I quit Abilify when I was on 10 mg because it wasn’t doing crap for my psychosis I was only getting nasty side effects. What I didn’t realize was it had been my main mood stabilizer, the Zoloft wasn’t really doing anything. Thus when I quit it thinking I would be fine because it wasn’t managing my psychosis anyways I ended up in a severe depressive episode and harmed myself, had to drop classes and be in a hospitalization program. If you’re prone to depression I would highly highly recommend not dropping this med cold turkey.
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I’m so tired of telling people here to take their meds !! Ish, you are making a mistake.
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How? The pdoc said I could come off in two months that was after I got rediagnosed with bipolar. I’ve waited longer. I finally feel ready. It’s not like I’ll be off Meds completely. Im just dropping the AP which I probably no longer need.
Does abilify work well as an antidepressant? I don’t want to go on an ssri right now because I’m not sure what it does to my symptoms, and Risperdal gives me bad depression. Could abilify fix that you think? I will talk to my pdoc, but what is your experience?
If you do it, you should do it under the care of a psychiatrist. Let your pdoc in on this.
Also, what nasty side effects?
sure. maybe you can make a living on the speed-eating circuit after you get fired. pfft. Ish, that’s just plain poor judgment.
If you have your pdoc’s blessing, I say give it a shot. You can always take an AP later, if things get ugly. If I remember well, you were diagnosed with BP with psychotic features? Then treating the BP comes first.
It is common in the uk for people with certain forms of BP to only take APs during times of mania/hypomania.
I don’t think it’s used as monotherapy for depression. It’s usually prescribed at a smaller dose along with an ssri to “enhance” the effects of the ssri. It was very effective for me and initially pulled me out of a long and bad depressive episode.
An ssri should not effect your psychotic symptoms because it only affects serotonin, not dopamine. I made sure that I wasn’t being out on something that could aggravate my psychosis.
And keep in mind the side effects were my personal experience, a lot of people find Abilify to have the least amount of side effects. Anyways I got akesthesia and the anxiety and restlessness that goes with that, pangs of intense hunger that went away when I took vitamin B with it, a twitchy mouth, twitchy fingers and drastically decreased attention span.
I’ll still be on mood stabilisers as for the psychosis it’s been 6.5 years. That’s how long I’ve waited to get off this med