Juniper29

Ok, understood. Sorry you are dealing with this. I hope you get some helpful input.

I’m confused. You were diagnosed with TD? But then she put you on a different antipsychotic? Did she take you off the med causing the TD ...?

Unless getting off the benzo is a goal of yours, I would probably wait for a different doc who will prescribe. I don't even take my Ativan that often but I would rather not work with a pdoc who excluded an entire class of meds, unless I had no other option.

I had no real side effects from 50 mg sertraline, just an initial headache and dizziness that went away. I was on it more for depression than anxiety. Zoloft has twice pulled me out of a deep depression. If you've already noticed some benefits, seems like it's worth a try?

They are different mainly because with bipolar depression you have to try to avoid triggering mania. What about adding an antipsychotic with antidepressant effects, like abilify or seroquel? (I'm not one of the med experts on here, and not bipolar, so feel free to tell me that's a terrible idea.)

Sounds like depression to me.

Wow. So she reached out to you so that she could tell you she was suffering more than you? Cancer is terrible, but that's not cool. I'd be hurt too.

Yeah. Abilify increased my anxiety at 5 mg and below. Once I hit 7.5 mg, it switched to being sedating.

Very true and well said.

I couldn't.p tolerate it. It actually knocked me out and made me sleep all day, oddly enough, but I also had terrible nausea and no appetite. It didn't do anything for my mood, just made me sick.

I've been on 10 mg abilify for about a year. When I first went to that dose it was definitely heavily sedating for me. It did get better after the first couple of weeks but I'm thinking maybe it didn't entirely wear off. Yeah. Both the abilify at this dose and the gabapentin were noticeably sedating at first but then it improved. So now, looking at my sleep patterns, I'm wondering if there's been some lingering sedation from one or both of them.

I think I've been sleeping more and more drowsy since we increased the Abilify and Gabapentin, because I did notice it at the time, but it's been in the past few weeks that I haven't been able to stay up past 7:30 or 8:30. It could be a combination, maybe? I'm not sure.

Ah, ok, didn't know that.

Is there a way to tell if sleeping a lot is due to meds? I've been on my current cocktail for a while and I don't think any of the ones I'm on are supposed to be sedating? But I sleep a lot (10+ hours) and am still sleepy all the time. I'm not currently depressed. I don't know if I'm just very very tired, or if my brain needs more sleep than the average person, or if it's the meds.

Knitting and crochet. Music. Being outside.