Been on seroquel for several years after trying many other antipsychotics. I’ve had bad (severe) physical reactions to haldol and risperidal, and don’t want to go in to every one I tried and the effect etc. But, seroquel has worked for me, I take a low dose only at night and my symptoms are stable/mild.
Got a new Doc, and he decided to revisit the Abilify question. My last Dr strongly suggested it, but left it up to me. Since I finally found seroquel and I didn’t get some weird rare side effect I was wary of switching. But it would be nice to not get the groggy, dry mouth, munchies with it messing up blood sugars like seroquel does. Which is why I’m thinking of switching.
So, I would LOVE to hear feedback from you wonderful folks about your experiences with abilify! Good, bad, dosages, etc. I seem to be pretty sensitive to meds (when I am stable and not in an acute psychotic episode) so knowing dosages and stuff would help me to know how strong this stuff is, and what I’m getting in to.
Thanks!
The member to ask might be @everhopeful, when she gets a chance to respond. She’s been on it for a long time and had a very positive experience with it.
I was on Seroquel but wanted to get off it because of the fatigue/over-sleeping and weight gain. I tried Abilify and it just did not work for me. I had very bad akathisia (muscle pain all over, restlessness,) and it did not treat my schizophrenia like Seroquel did. I tried a few more and ended up back on Seroquel as it’s the only med that seems to work for me at the moment. I just deal with the side effects.
Obviously everyone is different. Abilify is known to be a more activating antipsychotic though, while Seroquel is known to be more sedating. The sedating nature of Seroquel is apparently what I need (again me personally.)
I say it’s always worth the shot if you feel up to trying a new med. You will never know until you give it a fair trial, and it could work better for you.
I take abilify. It’s working out for me. I’m on 15mg. It raised my blood sugar and I’m prescribed metformin for that. Metformin has no side effects for me.
It increased my anxiety so I take 2 supplements for that. (Beta alanine and L-theanine) and that keeps the anxiety manageable.
I’m on 25mg and I’m doing well. I’ve tried 30mg before when the symptoms got worse but that totally knocked me out. As add on to the Abilify I drink 2.5 mg Valium as needed. The combination works well with me.
Akithesia can bite early but it’s not a bad drug if you get through that!
Didn’t work for me but I do well on zyprexa. It’s all different strokes for different strokes but it’s all about trying it out. Give it 6 weeks or so to give it a good go seems a common theme!
I’m on Vraylar since last January. It gives me nightmares at this point and a little mojo problem, but otherwise it handles my psychosis really well. On 6mg of it daily at bedtime.
It passed the FDA in 2015, so is still very recent. I fear a bit for its being less-tested than the tried-and-true, but so far, so good and I hope for the best.
Abilify increased my paranoia. I just couldn’t tolerate it. My psych team made me stay on it for a whole week and it was intolerable to me because of the increased paranoia. They had to discontinue the Abilify early and put me back on Risperdal.
I have been on it twice because I wanted it to work as it’s good on paper. It made me extremely agitated and anxious, and the last 6 months I have not had proper sleep because of it. I was on 30mg.
I now take Amisulpride, which I had never heard of before. It seems to work really well, I am very calm and after nearly 18 months of not driving I am due to get my license back in December if things continue as they are.
I’ve been taking 10 mg of Abilify for about a year now. It works for me although as some have mentioned it is a little sedating. Also I feel restless sometimes. I take it at night and it helps me sleep. I have symptoms only on rare occasions. Other than that it does the job in my case.
