wantmyhubbyback: zyprexa withdrawal symptom mgmt?

[wantmyhubbyback]

all had been good since my prior post.  hubby was continuing to taper the seroquel.  he was still taking 15 mg mirtazapine and 100 mg trazadone for sleep, and .5mg ativan in the mornings (although sometimes he'd forget to take the ativan and didn't notice any difference in his anxiety level during the day).  kidney meds have been the same over the last 18 months or so.

 

the first mania episode was jan 31.  in retrospect, i should've seen it coming because there were signs earlier in the month and in december but i interpreted them incorrectly -- in fact, i thought they were POSITIVE indicators of hubby's reduction of seroquel, which was down to essentially nothing at 12.5mg.  he had been tapering @ 10% for the last year.  the pdoc was ready for him to jump off.  he had a renewed attitude about stuff he'd been interested in long ago, he had a lot of energy, he was much more communicative ... but as i said somewhere above, hubby is an introvert, a typically quiet guy, and generally not concerned about home maintenance.  so  when he got hyperverbal and interested in hosting neighborhood parties -- not to mention suggesting organizing closets and drawers, and cleaning the house! -- i shoulda known something was wrong.  he also was sleeping maybe 4-5 hours a night vs the 6 or 7 hours he'd been sleeping last fall.

 

he was first highly agitated over a minor incident involving gardening.  i left to go run errands, and when i came back i found he had locked me out of our bedroom.  i called the pdoc who said to give him 100mg seroquel.  he became more angry, and although hubby has never been violent i was afraid because in 20 years i'd never seen him behave like this.  so i had to call the police, who came and convinced him to take the meds.  the next morning, he was essentially catatonic, and so i had to call the EMTs to take him to the hospital.   that led to a bad week of arguing with stupid doctors about not jacking  up the meds.  i think we ended up at 25mg seroquel. that episode lasted maybe 48 hours or so. 

 

the next 3 weeks were normal. coronavirus wasn't really yet a major thing.  all was good until feb 26, when he had a paranoid episode involving our electrical system. he thought "they" were looking at us through our appliances, etc so he pulled all the cords out of the wall. it looked like the catatonia was perhaps on the return so i convinced him to go back to a (different) hospital where we again argued with stupid doctors and ended up at 100mg seroquel plus the 2000mg depakote. this episode also lasted about 2 days.  all during this time, labs/scans were normal, med levels unchanged, and nobobdy could find any underlying physical condition for this even though they all agreed that it probably WAS a physical thing.  so... that's how we get to a bipolar diagnosis. (to me, THIS is what's crazy here).

 

so... now with coronavirus, he's understandably more anxious and nervous because of his immunocompromised status and his tendency to catastrophize makes it worse. i try to get him out of the house for a walk every day, and into the car for a ride every now and then, but he's really not interested in leaving our house at all.  that said, he's sleeping much better (perhaps too much, actually) and seeming to cope as well as can be expected.  it's unlikely that the pdoc will want to make any med changes while this is all going on, so i guess we're stuck with it for the year and who knows how much longer.

 

hoping everyone is staying healthy! hang in there.

[Worthy]

I’m also trying to quit zyprexa and it’s very tough.  I am currently at 1mg and wanting to get off at this dose.  Is this advisable

[wantmyhubbyback]

worthy, the admins will have to advise on that. but if you are able to get quantities at the .1mg level (as you say you are currently at 1.6mg), my recommendation would be to decrease by .1mg until you get to .1mg, then jump off from there.  alto says earlier in this thread "get down as low as you can."  it's solid advice.  the slower you go forward in tapering, the less likely you'll go backward.

[Altostrata]

Hello, want. How are things going?

 

This is absolutely not good. If he's been taking Ativan regularly, skipping doses can mess up his symptom pattern quite a bit. Irritability may be a symptom of this.

On 5/15/2020 at 6:58 AM, wantmyhubbyback said:

although sometimes he'd forget to take the ativan and didn't notice any difference in his anxiety level during the day