Loon-A-TiK Posted October 25, 2006 Share Posted October 25, 2006 Hiya- I've taken Risperdal for at least a year now. I'm taking it at 3.5mg/day. It does a good job at putting down my mania and bring me back to sanity. There are a couple of problems though, it figures, huh? #1- it makes me lactate. we're not talking about nursing mother lactation, just a bit, but i do lactate #2- i feel no sense of spirituality. i've read that it hits the 5HT2 receptor, which is responsible for spirituality (among other things), and this bothers me a lot that i do not feel connected anymore. spirituality is/WAS a huge part of my life. so where do we stand? well, i've knocked out all of the atypicals for one reason or another. abilify makes me mixed, zyprexa made me fat (but i love the stuff!), seroquel made me sleep 15 hrs a day and look stoned, and now risperdal makes me lactate and lose my spirituality. i guess there is a point where i must deal with something. i can't have it all. there has to be some kind of trade. do i keep risperdal? do i give up AAPs? i've had bad luck with haldol too, and don't want to go near other typicals. do i await the much awaited time-released risperdal and hope it has milder effects? i'm staying on the side of keeping risperdal. does anyone else have any ideas? there comes a time when you're at the end of the line and you just have to tolerate something... loon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dan Posted October 26, 2006 Share Posted October 26, 2006 Sorry Loon, this won't be much help. 1. I lactate too and I'm male. 2. I also lost my spirituality. But I also lost a lot of things that I can do without, and gained the abiility to function (mostly) so for me it's worth it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted October 26, 2006 Share Posted October 26, 2006 I guess only you can decide what is truly important to you. Interesting about the spirituality thing, I am having a little crisis of my own and I am on risperdal. I don't know if I believe that spirituality is just a chemical reaction in my brain though, I think it is a matter of will and intent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dan Posted October 26, 2006 Share Posted October 26, 2006 . I don't know if I believe that spirituality is just a chemical reaction in my brain though, I think it is a matter of will and intent. I try not to think about that... generally starting to think spiritually or religeously is a bad sign for me Catatonia can be nice too, but it's unhealthy (and waking up is disgusting!). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loon-A-TiK Posted October 26, 2006 Author Share Posted October 26, 2006 it is comforting to hear that other risperdal takers have the same issues as me. even if those are negative side effects, we've chosen to keep taking risperdal. i intend to have a spiritual life and try to both seek it out and be sought out, but it doesn't seem to go anywhere. maybe i'm not doing something right, but it always worked before. maybe i need to go a different way now tht i'm on medication that does block that center of my brain, i'm not sure. in unitarian-universalism there is the intellectualism theme, maybe i'll find myself more attracted to that route. but dan, it is "great" to hear that you have the same issues. i'm not the only one in the world. i'm not *that* crazy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mechante Posted October 26, 2006 Share Posted October 26, 2006 Risperdal makes me lactate, too. And I'm not very spiritual anymore, either, but I don't know if I blame that on the Risperdal or the depression. I think I'll stay on Risperdal because it does such a wonderful job of shutting up my brain. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boz-pot Posted October 28, 2006 Share Posted October 28, 2006 Brain ShutupageTM? Yes, I could do with a bit of that Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mechante Posted October 29, 2006 Share Posted October 29, 2006 Yeah, it's good, except sometimes it's too quiet ... but that's another story. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dan Posted October 29, 2006 Share Posted October 29, 2006 Yeah, it's good, except sometimes it's too quiet ... but that's another story. I noticed your sig says possibly sczA. That could also account for the quietness. Sz is a bit like what they say about war, moments of shear horror indespersed with periods of extreme boredom. (the horror is the positives and the boredom is the negs)... but your right it could also be meds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loon-A-TiK Posted October 30, 2006 Author Share Posted October 30, 2006 so- do you think i should put up with my risperdal, considering it makes me lactate and lose my spirituality (important to me), or just put up with it because it is the last in the line of atypicals and doesn't make me sick like the others do? i could always re-try abilify...nah....i don't know! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dee Posted October 30, 2006 Share Posted October 30, 2006 Can you get away with a slightly lower dose? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dweii Posted October 31, 2006 Share Posted October 31, 2006 I have the exact same problems with Geodon so I'm looking forward to some more advice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loon-A-TiK Posted October 31, 2006 Author Share Posted October 31, 2006 weirdly enough, i actually am lactating less on this higher dose (i went up 1mg recently). my spirituality seems to be in the same gutter it has been in. the options seem to be to put up with it, play with the dose some more, or change meds. i already thought of throwing out all APs and just going with lamictal, and that idea got tossed pretty quickly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loon-A-TiK Posted November 1, 2006 Author Share Posted November 1, 2006 i saw my pnurse yesterday and complained about my loss of spirituality. he claimed it is the "blunting effect" of the antipsychotics (nevermind that i've never had this on any other AAP) and that it is all in my head basically (well, yeah, but it is happening!)... so we went down .5 on the risperdal. the day dose makes me sleep anyway. i just can't believe how dismissive he was of my symptoms! just because everyone who comes to his office doesn't experience that doesn't mean that there aren't people out there who don't have the same thing. we're a bigger sample group here so we probably have more people affected by this than he would see in practice. i don't think he has too many people on risperdal (he likes seroquel). so that is my great update. i am dealing with it because we have no alternative, and he thinks i'm on crack anyway. we shall see.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LikeMinded Posted November 7, 2006 Share Posted November 7, 2006 oh that's cute, your pnurse is saying that the anti-dopamine sedation is the one robbing you of your spirituality. without even realizing that Risperdal is hundreds of times more the 5HT2 blocker than it is a dopamine blocker. some clinicians can't tell a receptor from a hole in the ground, though most psychiatric practitioners know their pharmacology pretty well and I'm pretty alarmed that yours seems to be a bit lacking in this knowledge. have you considered going back to Zyprexa? I mean sure you complained that Z was making you the Dairy Queen, but obviously Risp is doing this to you as well, so going back to Z can't make things too much worse. ...and don't get me started about how many clinicians don't understand that some treatments can be worse than the diseases... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogerj1 Posted November 12, 2006 Share Posted November 12, 2006 All's I can say about Risperdal is that the 3 months I was on it were the darkest 3 months of my life. I was misdiagnosed with bipolar, when my problem is actually ADD and depression. The drop in dopamine just about ruined my life. I wasn't at all interested in sex which is usually not the case (thank you Wellbutrin), I lost my sense of humor, I sat around work just waiting to get out of there. This all happened during early summer which is typically my favorite time of the year. I kept wondering to myself if the Risperdal was the problem yet everytime I'd start going off it I couldn't sleep even with large doses of Ambien. I may be good for someone who needs to lower their dopamine but it sure wasn't right for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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