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I know many people here have taken Abilify longterm as an adjunct, but I am honestly worried about longterm side effects (weight gain, akasthia). I trialed it twice and it made me constantly hungry, wanting to eat everything (I tried both 2mg, 5mg), made me tap my feet a lot. I wonder if taking it only on the week that I am very symptomatic (week before menstruation) it would be effective? Is Abilify something that kicks in within a few days of taking it? My other thought was biting the bullet and using Risperdone for this week (which I really hated when I was on it daily, it made me a zombie, and my Prolactin shot through the roof) The symptoms I want to treat (happen @ 4-7 days per month) are: dysphoria, hypersensitivity, severe depression, anger, uncontrollable crying to exhaustion, suicidal ideations, ruminations, stress and some heart palpitations.

My old psych-NP gave me seroquel for sleep around the end of December last year. I haven't taken it every night as she wanted or else I wouldn't be still sitting here almost 11 months later with around 50 or 60 25mg pills left. I have used it randomly for particularly tough nights where I know I can't sleep or I just feel really amped up/anxious and don't want to take more than 1mg of Klonopin. Is this ok to do? When I do use it, it ranges from 25-75mg and I sleep like a baby.

Hey all - Title sort of says it all, but I'll give some backstory. I'm certainly hypomanic; it's been one of those insidious onset episodes where it happened very slowly and then suddenly. I'm full of energy, and my impulse control is tanking fast. I'm not unsafe by any means, and I don't feel dysphoric or agitated. The subtle signs over the past week have been increasing irritability, needing much less sleep, poor spending habits, and perhaps most importantly, a recent recovery from a minor depressive episode (aka the unintentional upswing). I've got a call in to my pdoc. But she'll undoubtedly ask me what medication I'd like to try instead of recommending one herself, because we have a good, long-standing relationship and I work in the medical field. So, I'm curious about other's experiences. What has helped you tame hypo/mania the fastest in terms of medication?

How did it go? "The only thing we have to fear. Is fear itself!" So a small piece of my history. I was DXed with Anxiety and my doc suggested Xanax. As I've had experience with a person who takes Xanax and his apparent vegging out on it I begged off. I was afriad that whatever happened to him would happen to me. So we went over a list of other Benzos and the only one I knew about was Valium/Diazapam. I knew one person that took it and seemed to be perfectly functional on it. In fact if she had not suddenly stopped taking it I would have had no idea she took it. *Aburpt stopping a drug your taking daily like Valium can have serious baggage. Better to taper off or better yet not take it daily - I think So I tried a half tab and it did nothing. I tried 2mg and again nothing. I asked GDoc if we could up the dose to 5 to 10 and after getting an OK I found that 5 or 6mg was where I could tell it was doing something and that was enough for occasional bouts of Anxiety. I think the buspar helped put up a wall so that anxiety wasn't getting to the curled up on the floor or unable to drive level stuff but the occasional super tense up holding my breath and mouth drying up kind of anxiety that wasn't daily? It worked pretty good. Maybe a handfull of times (Finger counting amounts) I took 10 mg. That was a tad sedating maybe too much unless its the Sky is falling levels of anxiety. So - the Benzos = dementia stuff started going around and I was called to turn in the unused valium and was put on Xanax (As needed) Xanax at the 0.5 mg amount ought to have been like 10 mg of Valium from what I've read but it was (at times) underwhelming. Or perhapes the short lived effect made the interrupted anxiety more noticeable? Anyway I refilled it on a fairly infrequent basis because I was never in danger of using all the tabs in a month. Then I signed up for an automated reminder system for my meds and Vitamins. The Xanax came in monthly and for the last 4 or 5 months I just texted back "1" to refill. The only other option was press 9 to make the system forget about reminding me about that drug. So.... I made a complaint about Xanax maybe 0.5 was not effective or maybe I needed Xanax ER or as I put it Diazapam worked pretty well why not just go back? I think the monthly refilling set off an alarm and I got a major talking to about addiction. After explaining I wasn't using them all that frequent and how extra crappy things were going I got a new DX of severe Anxiety and was put back on Diazapam. At the useless 2 mg dose and reminded not to take it everyday. SIGH... So I see tdoc this week and PDoc in a week or two to figure this out. I'm thinking of bringing in the unused tabs of Xanax to show I'm not shoveling it in. Explain that I think I'm having a short acting or dose problem with Xanax and see if I can't get back to the dose that worked with the Diazapam. Are Benzos the new Heroin of meds? Should they be? The stuff I read from the UK seem to imply this. I'm seeing UK law suits against Doctors for "creating" drug addicts etc. I don't have a dx of paranoia but it seems like the National health care types are finding ways to unprescribe a lot of drugs and therapies. Or is this just me? Whats going on with you guys? If your taking a benzo is there a sudden signal from your doc that they want you off them? My impression is that Xanax is far more addictive then Valium. Or are they just two sides of the same coin? Do you sign pledges not to misuse them? Are you doing meds checks where you are doing an inventory of unused pills? Real problem or?