I am actually stopping taking Zyprexa. I started some weeks ago taking Rexulti instead.
The problem is, I have an insomnia problem since last week. Each night, I wake up at 3am and I am unable to sleep afterwards because I don’t feel sleepy at all.
I had this exact same problem in 2015 while I was taking Abilify. The problem was solved by changing it for Saphris.
I thought about that this morning : Is it possible that in 2015, the cause of my insomnia was Abilify. If so then is it possible that Rexulti is the cause of my current insomnia? Since Rexulti is the successor of Abilify and they are similar, I thought Rexulti would have the same effect on me…
Hi @anubis, it’s good to see you. It’s been awhile. Anyway I take rexulti in the morning because for me it’s energizing. But I also frequently wake in the middle of the night. But if I take it at night I can’t sleep at all. I also take saphris so that helps me with the sleeping problem and I’m in the lucky position of being able to take naps when I need to. The only thing I can think is that you will get used to it and your sleeping schedule will straighten out or talk to your pdoc about adding saphris, they make a nice team. I feel better with the both of them.
I used to have problems sleeping through the night. Now I take melatonin and I sleep much better at night. It is a cheap, over the counter supplement. Give it a try.
Pharmacological Rexulti should be less activating and improve sleep quality but at the same time not be too sedating throughout the day. In theory that’s one of the improvements over Abilify. It’s a serotonin/dopamine modulator rather than a partial agonist. But we all react differently to drugs, so in your case, it might as well cause insomnia in you. Though, take in account it might as well be because you just got off the strongly sedating drug Zyprexa and maybe should adjust the dose of Rexulti. Anyway, if it was me, I would first try taking it in the morning and see how it’ll affect you.
I still have insomnia now since nearly 2 months waking up at 3 am and not feeling sleepy afterwards (and not sleeping at all also). It’s really hard.
My psychiatrist made me try trazodone 150 mg but it makes me have a lot of palpitations. Now she makes me try Dalmane (flurazapam). I don’t really know where my psychiatrist want to go with that since it’s an old and highly addictive sleeping pills and I don’t feel that I can take it on long term just to keep me taking Rexulti.
My psychiatrist is trying hard to find an antipsychotic which does not cause cognitive impairment which is is important since I’m a software developer but I don’t want to become an addict to another sleeping pill other than clonazepam.
My psychiatrist said that if Dalmane doesn’t help she will make me try Latuda but I did a search and found many persons having the same insomnia problem with this antipsychotic compare to Rexulti.
It’s really too bad because I don’t have any cognitive impairment with Rexulti and feeling very alert with it.
Since now, I have tried Zyprexa, Abilify, Saphris, Rexulti.
I have a cognitive impairment with Zyprexa and Saphris and can’t sleep with Abilify.
Zyprexa causes sedation. It is very likely if you just stopped the Zyprexa that you are having rebound insomnia, I got very severe insomnia after dropping seroquel and had to taper even smaller than I had been to fix it.
If you’ve been off the Zyprexa a good while though and rexulti is causing you insomnia for sure that’s rough actually my own sleep has been more disrupted than usual lately I’m also on rexulti
actually my own sleep has been more disrupted than usual lately I’m also on rexulti