Long story short, geodon isn’t working for me, I believe it is making me heavily sedated to where it has become almost impossible to function and it is dangerous to go anywhere or do anything. So I’m wondering whether I should drop it now, and risk having bad withdrawal on my road trip, or risk being incredibly sedated while driving on my trip. It’s kind of a lose lose either way but the sedation sounds more dangerous to me.
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Switch another ap…???
some user said something about her geodon sedation going away after a couple of months. i slept on it after my morning dose too. if you have stuff you absolutely have to do in the car i would back down on the dose or stop the medication all together. if sedation is really an issue try coffee, mortimermouse used to swear by it and he was on geodon for a year or more i suppose and highly functioning. pixel may or missmermaid or ninjastar may also have something to say (i think they were all on geodon at some point)
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I thought it was helping with your negative symptoms? Maybe this recent change in your sleep cycle isn’t caused by Geodon? After all you’ve been taking it for awhile.
I’m definitely going to be lowering my dose
I’m not sure if you’ve really given it a chance before you add it to your list of drugs that don’t work. If your narcoleptic try for modafinil first. Wish you the best!
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Hi Anna, you could go back on the lower dose of Geodon and see if you feel less sleepy.
Also L-Theanine, vitamin b6 and caffeine can help reduce fatigue.
I have an idea, maybe I am just taking it at bad times. Or when I take it, I need to make sure that a few hours after I will not have anything going on. If I want to stay up late, I have to take it later. I think maybe actually I won’t have to quit at all but I have to plan out more carefully when I take my doses, and prepare myself to be sleepy for a few hours 3-4 hours after each dose.
What sucks is the sleepiness is combined with mild akathisia so that gives me anxiety that I’m about to pass out 
But I just realized that the whole reason I went up a dose was because I was still being harassed by demons at night…and I realized I haven’t been harassed now in a while…I was looking at my shower mat and wasn’t hallucinating for once…I woke up from a nightmare but I didn’t spiral into paranoia…I think it is starting to work for my positive symptoms. I think I will just have to plan when I take it more carefully.
Ok so I’m doing an experiment day. Thinking back on my experiences I tend to become sleepy about 4 hours after each dose of geodon. The sleepiness tends to last for around 3 hours. So I set my first alarm to take my med for 7 am, which means I should become sleepy around 11 am, and be sleepy until 1 pm. I like to sleep in until 1 pm anyways so I should be asleep for all of that. My second dose I’m going to take at 10 pm, and I should become sleepy at 2 am which is when I like to go to bed normally. Then I’ll just sleep the rest of the night.
The pain here is having the self discipline to wake up at 7 am and eat 500 calories…plus falling back asleep immediately after eating 500 calories is going to make me feel pretty sick…
But I don’t know what else to do
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But then the other issue there is geodon pretty much poops out totally after 7 hours, which is why they want you to take it at morning and dinner so you’re covered from when you wake up to when you go to sleep. If I take it at 7 am it will be completely pooped out by 2 pm. If I don’t take it again until 10 pm that’s 8 hours without it. Will that have bad effects? This is a puzzle
If you take the Geodon just when you need too, please be careful 
When the psychiatrist changed my antipsychotic 9 1/2 years ago i became suicidal and nearly died.
The main problem with schizophrenia is that we don’t always think logically.
You might be better to always take a small amount of Geodon than nothing at all, until you know how it will affect you.
I have never been on Geodon, but I was on Risperidone last year which is similar, and I know though experience that Risperidone has a fast onset of action.
Do you have a psychiatric nurse/doctor you can discuss your medication with?
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Yeah. Right now I’m going to try my plan of changing the times of when I take it. If that doesn’t work, I will gradually wean myself off of it.
Do you think you have narcolepsy?
I take my Chlorpromazine once a day in the evening because it is sedating, it has a long half-life of 30 hours, so I don’t get especially tired after I take it.
Geodon has a much shorter half-life of 7-10 hours which means that once daily dosing will cause a big variation in it’s effect over the day.
My sleeping is far from perfect, last night I went to bed at 11am and woke up at 4am, so I will probably feel tired this afternoon, I am no longer taking Trazodone because it doesn’t help me sleep without taking it with alcohol and I gave up drinking almost 3 weeks ago. My sleeping has always been poor, even as a child I would be awake most of the night and be really tired all day.
How long have you been taking Geodon? A month, right? It took me like 3 months before it stopped sedating me hardcore. I used to only take it at night, because I found the AM dose to be too sedating, though. My doctor just switched me back to an AM dose, though, and it’s hard to adjust. I think your 7 AM and 10 PM plan should work for you. You don’t typically have hallucinations in the afternoon, right? They’re mostly at night and in the morning? And if it doesn’t work for you, you can always start taking the PM dose earlier.
Now that I have to wake up and eat 500 calories almost immediately, it helps me to have the food prepared the night before. That way, I don’t have to stumble around the kitchen half awake. Peanut butter and mixed nuts are really high-calorie foods, and they make it easier to get to 500 without feeling overly full.
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You should probably take it at the exact same time everyday anyway.
My positive symptoms are generally worse and only a problem at night whereas my negative symptoms are a constant. Anyways I switched it to 6 am so that way the drowsiness would stop around 1 and now I’m up so it seems to have worked! I’ll see how the rest of today goes.
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i quit 160 mg cold turkey it was hell for a few days than not that bad for a few more days
i had panic attacks whenever i tried to take it once a day instead of twice but i didnt have one when i stopped taking it altogether i would be shaking because i would feel so cold and whenever i got under covers to not be cold i would start sweating, also brain zaps nonstop all day long for a week
Judging by what you post on here, it really seems like Geodon is helping, so I hope you are able to find some way to keep taking it.
I’ll find a recipe for you for “refrigerator oatmeal” which sounds gross but actually isn’t. You can make 4 days worth at a time so it’s not too much trouble. The trick is getting it up to 500 calories, but adding a piece of peanut butter toast should do the trick with minimal fuss.
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I think that you may end up up on 2 antipsychotics, one for the psychotic symptoms at night, and a non-sedating one for the negative symptoms during the day.
I don’t really have any psychotic symptoms at the moment, but my negative symptoms are still really bad.