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Now that I have been on this cocktail for two weeks, I am noticing a new reality. I want to be more outgoing, I am alot calmer and want to socialize more. The downside is that I lack good social skills and the consequences scare me. I would be laying vulnerable and not knowing how to protect myself. Can I handle the changes with the new me? The old me, heck, I knew what to expect and how to handle this.

Hello everyone, my name is Nicholas and I'm a 21 years old guy from Italy. I suffered from chronic insomnia from the age of 15 and in mid-February 2017 was prescribed before bedtime the antidepressant mirtazapine at 15 mg and the antipsychotic olanzapine at 2,5 mg. I took them for 2 weeks without improvement. Therefore the psychiatrist increased mirtazapine at 30 mg and olanzapine at 10 mg. Now I believe that he thought I had bipolar disorder type 1 but I hadn’t any mental illnes. I took olanzapine at 10 mg because I think was only a tranquilizer and because I trusted the doctor. Olanzapine made me sleep for 13 hours but I was no longer myself. After 5 days I tried to split the tablet but it gave me a strange effect. So I continued for others 15 days at 10 mg because I really needed to sleep. Then in April 2017 I tapered olanzapine in 1 week because I could not live anymore like that. I took it for a total of 48 days. After this I reduced mirtazapine to 15 mg and 1 week later I stop cold turkey. At that time I took the benzodiazepine brotizolam at 0,25 mg for 2 weeks to help me sleep. The withdrawal symptoms were terrible for 4 months and I have not been the same anymore. When I was on mirtazapine and olanzapine I had eyelids fasciculation 2 or 3 times per day. When I quitted olanzapine the eyelids fasciculation ceased. 2 weeks after withdrawal from olanzapine and 1 week from mirtazapine I started to have frequently intermittent muscle twitching in the left thigh and occasionaly pulsating muscles in other parts of the body. After less than a couple of months they have decreased in frequency and intensity but didn’t stop completely. During this period I was forced to take the antidepressant sertraline and the benzodiazepine diazepam because for the new psychiatrist I had obsessive compulsive disorder with an obsession for the damage of antipsychotics. I did not have anything like that and could taper and withdraw after 3 months in July 2017. Now I think maybe that the muscles twitching have diminished because diazepam is also a muscle relaxant. In August 2017 I started to have continuous fasciculations in the legs when I lie down and less frequently when I sit while I never had them when I move. Few times a day I had pulsating muscles also in the arms and the trunc but never in the face. I never had muscle twitches in multiple parts of the body at the same time. In September the muscles twitching moved for 1 week in the lower abdominals. In October 2017 for 2 weeks the muscles twitches suddenly stopped in the legs and continued in the rest of the body about 10 times per day. When the muscles twitching returned they were milder. Sometimes the fasciculations are so mild that when I looked at my calf I saw them without feel them. In the legs they have become more single rapid muscular contractions than pulsating muscles. Soon after I started to have continuos pulsating muscle in my upper lip. The muscle twitch was very mild and lasted 2 weeks but after it I have sometimes pulsating muscle also in my face. Do you think it is a tardive dyskinesia caused by olanzapine despite I haven’t involuntary body movements? Do you think it could be some other side effect caused by olanzapine or maybe mirtazapine? It’s 8 months that I’ve it. I have been visited by several psychiatrists and neurologists and everyone said it was just stress. Even if I do not have the symptoms of tardive dyskinesia I do not know what else it could be: I’m not stressed and I do not suffer from anxiety, I do not take stimulants, I can sleep, I have had blood tests and I haven’t electrolyte imbalances or hypoglycemia, I did electromyography and had normal results. The thing that worries me most is that there is a very large amount of medical literature that associates tardive dyskinesia with cognitive impairments. If it were to be tardive dyskinesia do you think that the fact that for almost 2 weeks the muscles twitches had almost disappeared means that I am healing? Thank you and greetings from Italy.

Hi, my new doc told me I should give olanzapine a try because of lack of sleep. Has anyone else tried this med? I don't really dig the idea of taking something that is tagged as "sedative" and "anti-psychotic". Why would I need an "anti-psychotic" for sleeping? What kind of "sedative" effects does this pill create? I don't want to go around all numb'd down. The meds they give me usually don't work, anti-depressants have all been useless. Only lamotrigine has made me feel better. I really don't trust this olanzapine thing, I don't even like it's name, sounds trashy. Also, has anyone felt psychotherapy does help or have any kind of benefit beyond "venting out"? I could get it for free because of the mental health program in my country (just as the meds). I have tried it before and it was really a waste of time and it is frustating to hear someone just turn thoughts upside down and pretend it is some kind of insightful and constructive feedback, life if that wasn't something someone neurotic (as me and I guess some of you are since we share some kind of mental trait*) does all the time. At least that was my experience. To the ones here with good experiences with psychotherapy, how do think it helped you? My old doc once told me psychotherapy made a difference between people with mental problems getting a career and stuff like that. The difference was that the ones who did psychotherapy were 80% more likely to develop some kind of stable career. I think the thing is that 80% of every group of people will most likely be able to develop a career, regardless of psychotherapy or MI, so the stadistics just putted the "psychotherapy made this possible!" watermark to it. idk. *: That made me question if people with bipolar or other mental illness share some traits beyond the diagnosis? Have you guys noticed some kind of pattern? this is not really important, just thought it was interesting Thanks for reading (:

i've been on zyprexa for 4 months now and i have gained 13 pounds, for me it wasnt a big deal since i was severely underweight but now im scared of gaining more since i dont want to stop being skinny, i felt like the hunger was really bad for the first two months but know im not so hungry but still very scared of gaining weight, does the weight gain ever stop? should i tell my doctor about it and get a med change? weight is turning into a huge issue for me and causing lots of anxiety and even some food restriction but i feel as if my doctor would not change it since im still a little underweirght and therefore no real reason exists to switch meds. (i have never struggled with an eating disorder i was just naturally really skinny)

i've been on zyprexa for 4 months now and i have gained 13 pounds, for me it wasnt a big deal since i was severely underweight but now im scared of gaining more since i dont want to stop being skinny, i felt like the hunger was really bad for the first two months but know im not so hungry but still very scared of gaining weight, does the weight gain ever stop? should i tell my doctor about it and get a med change? weight is turning into a huge issue for me and causing lots of anxiety and even some food restriction but i feel as if my doctor would not change it since im still a little underweirght and therefore no real reason exists to switch meds. (i have never struggled with an eating disorder i was just naturally really skinny)

hello, has anyone here had any success with olanzapine (zyprexa) for depression? be it bipolar, unipolar? or heard about it being used for that? if so, at which dosage? it's a long story but i am not dealing well with maintenance ECT at all and need something to help with maintaining antidepressant effect. i thought i heard something about it being used for depression so decided to ask. i should mention seroquel used to work well for me at 300-400 mg mark but i simply can't tolerate how it feels on my brain. zyprexa i have some for panic attacks for now and it seems to be ok side effect-wise at 5 mg mark. thank you!

I talked to my doctor about stopping my olanzapine prescription. We're going slowly, lowering it from 10mg to 7.5mg to start, and then dropping it further later. I'm a bit nervous, because I heard that going off anti-psychotics can be rough. But I think it's best that I stop taking them. Anyone go off olanzapine and have any tips on how to handle it? Any weird side effects I should look out for? I've Googled it so I know the general reactions people get, but I wanted to know what you guys experienced.

Hello Everybody It's my first time on this board and it looks like the right place for me with my current condition so I just wanted to say hey A little about me : I'm 23 years old and recently after developing psychosis :/ (about 3 weeks ago) and its really freaking me out ; racing thoughts, paranoia, delusional thinking, inability to form a sentence when talking to people, hard to concentrate when people are talking to me as my mind would race, fear people were judging me , isolating as a result, and to top it off , a bad bout of insomnia because ofthe racing thoughts. (I would have went to bed at 11pm and not be able to sleep till 6am next day out of exhaustion) I didn't know what to do , so I walked ( very clumsily) to my local A&E and was in an absolute mess when I got there. I told the receptionist I needed to speak to a psychiatrist ASAP and they said to wait in the waiting room , which I did and took only a half an hour but it felt like an eternity because I was just beginning to experience mild visual hallucinations , which kind of freaked me out even more.. So I met with the psychiatrist and he reccomended I take Olanzapine, which I did for 3 or 4 days but I didn't see any improvements in my thinking processes from it. It just seemed to make me hungry and sleepy.. So I discontinued it, and that was about 2 weeks ago and the jumbled thinking was still there. It seemed to be worse during the morning than at night for some reason.. So after 2 weeks, and no improvements , I went to my local doctor and they precribed '' Klonopin AKA clonazepam '' ''0.5mg take 1 - 2 twice daily '' I took one 0.5mg clonazepam tablet about 10 hours ago as of this writing and I must say i feel sooo much better , it is after making some difference. The intrusive thoughts I was having have somewhat subsided , if I were to put it on a scale : before it was 80% , now it feels like its down to 20% . My racing thoughts are no longer racing nearly as much and I feel little anxeity around having psychosis after taking this newly prescribed medication.. Now after doing a little bit of research on this new drug the Doc prescribed me, it is generally for short term use and NOT as an antipsychotic med per se... AND , after a little more research, withdrawls from clonazepam seemingly can actually INDUCE a psychotic episode and hallucinations!! So I don't know what to do now going forward.. I would prefer to avoid medication if at all possible, and go down different routes that seemingly help, like CBT, regular exercise, group therapies etc, I have hope for the future at the moment , though I am aware that I am writing this after takng the new medication for the first time ,so my thoughts and feelings when I wake up tomorrow morning could completely change :/ So thats me, I'm happy to be part of crazyboards, Thank you Joe

Hello I am beginning this journey to find my own chemistry. For one year I have been on Xyprexa and Lithium. I have been depressed, afraid of life, uninterested in the things I love, anti social. Every time I thought that maybe the medication was making me feel this way and I attempted to wean off the withdrawals were too hard for me to take. So, they gave me an antidepressant. Then I gained the strength to withdrawal slowly from olanzapine. It was a hard 2 weeks. I am sleeping now but I am really sad and feel a bit brain dead. I keep asking myself, "is this me or the withdrawal"? I know with the number of meds I am on this could take some time. But, has anyone felt extremely sad during withdrawals? I see lots of anxiety but not so much sadness. I would love to hear from people who have thoughts and ideas.

Hello. I started taking Mirtazapine at 15 mg two weeks ago and was tapered off of Zyprexa from 5 mg to 2.5 mg. Starting this Sunday, I have been having strange thoughts about harming others to the point of obsession. I've had OCD in the past, but I've never had these type of thoughts before. I've gotten totally off of Zyprexa before so I don't believe it was due to Zyprexa withdrawal. Could it be due to the Remeron?