Aquaheal: coming off antipsychotics

[Aquaheal]

I take 200 mg of thorazine nightly. I have been alternating nights when I take it. I live in a group home so I can't half the pills, so half the nights I get poor sleep. Every other day I get akathisia from the thorazine for a while. Today I will be getting my abilify Maintaina shot for a month, 300 mg. I don't know if I will see my nurse practitioner today and if I do I don't know what he will do about it. Now that I am off some of the antipsychotic medication I feel some spark in life and less suicidal Ideations, especially on the days I didn't take the thorazine the night before. The other day I did experience some familiar sadness though. My diagnosis is bipolar and schizoid-effective. I also take propranolol and amantadine for blood pressure and Parkinson's like symptoms.

[Shep]

Hi, Aquaheal.

 

Welcome to Surviving Antidepressants.

 

19 hours ago, Aquaheal said:

I take 200 mg of thorazine nightly. I have been alternating nights when I take it. I live in a group home so I can't half the pills, so half the nights I get poor sleep. Every other day I get akathisia from the thorazine for a while.

 

The elimination half-life of Thorazine is about 30 hours, so you may be going into interdose withdrawal (withdrawal in between doses) by alternating nights, as you note, leading to poor sleep. And then getting akathisia as a side effect when you do take it. 

 

Please see this post for more on the problems of alternating days:

 

How about taking my medication every other day to reduce my dosage?

 

20 hours ago, Aquaheal said:

Today I will be getting my abilify Maintaina shot for a month, 300 mg.

 

Is this your first dose of this drug? Or are you taking Abilify in addition to Thorazine? 

 

How long have you been taking Thorazine on alternating nights? 

 

20 hours ago, Aquaheal said:

My diagnosis is bipolar and schizoid-effective.

 

We don't put a lot of stock in psychiatric nonsense, such as their labels. A lot of what constitutes someone's diagnosis is more about the side effects and withdrawal effects of the drugs. You may be interested in this book, which comes highly recommended here:

 

Anatomy of an Epidemic

 

Scroll down and you'll find a series of videos based on this book. 

 

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Please continue to post in this thread to document your taper and to ask questions. 

[Aquaheal]

I saw the nurse, she gave me my abilify shot. She is supposed to talk to my nurse practitioner about getting my dosage of thorazine down from 200 mg a night to 100 mg a night. I haven't heard back from her yet. I have been alternating nights of thorazine for the last few days. I have been taking an abilify shot monthly for about a year or 2. Alternating the thorazine has been a little rough. Last night I had a hard time getting up and taking my meds and this morning I felt a little out of it, staring into space a bit. Right now I feel a lot better after a lot of sleep. Yesterday I ordered anatomy of an epidemic. I plan to read it, get my dad to read it and then hopefully get my NP to read it. I also talked to my nurse about the ill effects of psychotropics on mitochondria. The pharmacists gave me one big pill and the group home does not like me coming off my meds. My parents know about the withdrawal. I appreciate the articles about alternating dosages. I now know it will be a rough road. Also I take a multivitamin, fish oil and probiotics.

[Shep]

18 hours ago, Aquaheal said:

I saw the nurse, she gave me my abilify shot. She is supposed to talk to my nurse practitioner about getting my dosage of thorazine down from 200 mg a night to 100 mg a night. I haven't heard back from her yet. I have been alternating nights of thorazine for the last few days.

 

The first thing you'll want to do is to get your Thorazine down to the same dose and the same time taken every day, as opposed to alternating days, so it's good you're already working toward that goal. 

 

Before you were alternating nights, were you on a steady dose of 200 mg a night? I'm concerned that dropping down to 100 mg a night may be too rapid a reduction and your sleep may get worse. 

 

Please post your thoughts.

 

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• Please use actual dates or approximate dates (mid-June, Late October) rather than relative time frames (last week, 3 months ago) 
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[Shep]

18 hours ago, Aquaheal said:

Yesterday I ordered anatomy of an epidemic. I plan to read it, get my dad to read it and then hopefully get my NP to read it.

 

That's great you're going to read Anatomy and share it with others in your world. You may also want to take a look at another one of Whitaker's books, Mad in America. Whitaker listed all of the research for that book here on his website:

 

Mad in America

 

Scroll down and you'll see the research linked. It's clear these drugs do far more harm than good. Another important paper is:

 

The Case Against Antipsychotics: A Review of Their Long-term Effects

 

These are great resources to have as you make your case to get off these drugs. It will help to have your nurse practitioner and doctor on board, since it's easier to taper off pills than injections. So at some point, you'll want to have that conversation with your treatment team. 

 

For now, though, let's concentrate on the Thorazine. As I wrote in my post above, getting on a steady daily dose will be your first task. 

[Aquaheal]

Like I said, I live in a group home. They control the meds and the dosage. They let me take a half pill last night but it is rare for them to do that. They won't give me a sleeping aid unless the NP approves. It is hard to get a hold of the NP right now. If I am going to get stable with a stable dosage, right now I have a choice. Either go back on the 200 mg and risk the akathisia or go without the thorazine altogether. It's just a tough road to hoe. If suicidal or homicidal thoughts get too bad I will have to go in the hospital. I appreciate your help but I am simply between a rock and a hard place right now. I got spotty sleep last night. I have been sharing a lot of what is on the mad In America website with my dad.

[Shep]

The best advice I can think of is to stabilize as much as you can on these drugs and work toward winning the trust of the staff at the group home and your prescriber.  I would not advise stopping Thorazine cold turkey, especially if you've been on it for a long time and it helps with sleep. 

 

Once you're able to taper, we'll be able to help you set up a plan. At least you have the information you need and can do some research in the meantime. 

 

I'll leave you with some links that may help you now or in the future when you're getting ready to advocate for getting off these drugs. 

 

How do you talk to a doctor about tapering and withdrawal?

 

Non-drug techniques to cope with emotional symptoms

 

The more work you can put into managing your behavior and emotions with non-drug techniques, the better chances you have of being able to win the trust of those around you to get off these drugs. 

 

Keep reading and learning and do as much self care as you can. 

 

[Aquaheal]

Last night they let me cut my thorazine in half again. Sleep was pretty good. I might be able to half the thorazine most of the time now. The head staff person probably isn't going to be convinced in any way to let me taper off these meds. If something goes wrong her job is on the line but the lower staff might go along with it. Sometimes there is a disconnect between the head office and the rest of the staff. I got a little of akathisia this morning but it was tolerable and with a little sleep it mostly went away. I told another staff who wants to get off his latuda about this site and mad in America. He was diagnosed with bipolar and seems to have depression. His depression may be coming from the latuda. I told him about the research done on antipsychotics and hormones and how hormones affect mental health. I have been advising him to take probiotics. It takes a while for the probiotics to build up in your system though. I am thinking about asking my NP about giving me saphris instead of thorazine. I haven't tried saphris yet but I am concerned about taking 3 antipsychotics at a time. If the saphris works out it might be able to help me taper off the shot. From what I can tell the psychiatrists really like the shot. I might be able to convince my NP though that the other shot options probably are not going to work out because the pill form likely will not work out or do not work out. The shot that might work out is ziprexa but I am concerned about weight gain. The people I really need to convince are my parents and I am working on that. They don't seem to realize how much power they have over my meds. They seem to look to the NP while the NP often seems to be swayed heavily by their input. Also the NP may not have the time to do any research on his own and I only have so much time to spend with him every month or so. I have yet to get my mom to the center for proactive medicine. It is a holistic treatment center in Nashville.

[Aquaheal]

Last night I got some akathisia from the half dose so I went down to a quarter dose. Sleep was spotty. 

[Shep]

We recommend reducing at a rate of 10% or less per month (off the previous month's dose, not the original dose). Please see:

 

Why taper by 10% of my dosage?

 

By continuing to jump around on your dose, you risk kindling your nervous system. 

 

Limbic Kindling -- Hardwiring the brain for hypersensitivity

 

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