What medication to choose

I’m currently on low dose of haledol what medication is best for my schizophrenia I want to change because it causes gyno and haleperidol does nothing but make me week and tired.

Haldol is my favorite, so I’m no help.

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Risperdal has worked the best for me there’s weight gain but if you excercise and eat right there’s no problem

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Do NOT go right onto Invega bc that is one of the worst drugs to take. I know that’s my opinion but if u look it up on this forum all u see is that it’s basically poison…

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Yeah I was on paliperidone once it gave me gyno and I don’t want it to get worse

I take abilify 10mg a day. It can be stimulating but I take ativan, L-theanine, and drink different teas to get rid of the restlessness. And I try to keep busy. Hope this helps.

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Saphris is the best out of everything I’ve tried, but it’s a newer med. It has a sedative effect, but that worked well because I had started carrying a knife on me because I was convinced I was going to be kidnapped and would have to fight to get away. I had to go out to walk the dogs several times a day, and I was a mess. It calmed that right down.

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Latuda and Geodon work for me. But the last time I was hospitalized I got a shot of Haldol and a shot of Ativan and in three days I was feeling pretty good but it faded fast.

I have often thought of trying Haldol because of that. But I did add an anxiety med and that helped.

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Is Haldol stronger? How does it work for paranoia? Does it have a calming effect?

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There’s no way of knowing, we all react differently to meds

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After I got the shots I didn’t feel paranoid anymore but then it came back a few days later.

I didn’t tell anyone that the paranoia went away. I was too scared to talk about it.

That was my experience.

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I’m on Risperdal Consta, Geodon, Seroquel and Celexa. There’s weight gain. But if you keep real close tabs on your calories, and watch your weight with a scale, there is no problem there. This combo of meds completely takes away all of my psychosis, mania and depression.

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Haldol is a strong drug but I am taking low dose 7.5 mg a night in liquid form yes it does have a calming effect. But can make you a little tired and weak.

Haldol can be really rough to tolerate. There is a test that you can have done which categorized which drugs are best for you based on your genetic profile. It matches up your genetics against the pharmacology of the drugs. It won’t tell you for sure what will work but it recommends drugs that you are likely to tolerate best and it identifies drugs that you are not likely to tolerate well and had a middle category. It should be covered by your insurance. The test is easy. I just had my doc swab the inside of my cheek and then the dr’s office FedExed it.

You can look on the website. It’s genesight.com

If you haven’t tried a lot this can be a good way to help you and your doc make some more educated choices. It usually feels like a shot in the dark but this could be worth a shot.

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The thing to take away from this is that every drug works differently for every person. Finding the right med, or combination of meds, can be a long journey.

There is a lot of debate over the effectiveness of DNA tests, but they are worth looking into. There are many, from various companies. If you want to go that route, I suggest researching them to see which one looks best for you.

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I agree every med works different for everyone so it is a trial and error to find the one that works best for you.

Haldol is a typical ap, which means it’s older.

Maybe you would do better on an atypical ap like seroquel or zyprexa or latuda or geodon. There are more than what I mentioned.

Other atipicals that are a bit more stimulating and work a little differently are rexulti, abilify and vraylar.

I’d suggersst working with your pdoc to find one that helps more than the haldol. It may take some time for each med to work and it also make take some time and trial and error to find the right one. Good luck.

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What do you mean more stimulating?

I mean, in general, for most people, they can be less sedating.

They are partial dopamine agonists. They are operate by both increasing and decreasing dopamine.

Supposedly, Vraylar, for instance, increases dopamine when it is low and decreases it when it is too high. This is what my psychiatrists said. Vraylar works on other chemicals in the brain too, especially serotonin. It supposedly rebalances dopamine and serotonin.

Abilify, on the other hand, is a little more complicated to explain. From what I’ve read, it is supposed to work on different receptors as partial agonist and other parts of dopamine receptors as a antagonist. Basically it means that in some spots dopamine is stimulated instead of being suppressed, thus it increases and decreases dopamine in different ways and places in the brain.

I don’t know much about rexulti and haven’t read much about it, except that it is in the same class as vraylar and abilify in that it is a partial agonist of dopamine receptors. This means, that unlike other anti-psychotics, it increases dopamine in some places, at least some of the time.

I am no neuroscientist, so I could not be explaining it exactly right. All antispychotics work on other brain chemicals but it is the activation of dopamine that makes them more stimulating.

Hope that helps!

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Abilify - too much weight gain
Risperidone - did nothing.
Saphris - Effective but takes like crap
Loxapine - HEAVY sedation.
Latuda - best one for me. Low sedation, practically no side effects.

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If there was any medication that helped you in the past, at all, even if it’s something seemingly unrelated to your condition, mention it to your doctor. They can make sense of such things. It might lead to a good start toward a medication that helps.

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