Medication: dosage is all

My latest experiment as a detached observer is over. I am back on my antipsychotic Aripiprazole (Abilify) This is what happened:

After I stopped the medication to find out whether it was having any effect, I soon found myself engulfed in a wave of agitation. This is what agitation looks like for me:

  • My body feels like it has become infested by a plague of internal insects: I itch all over and yet can scratch nothing. I literally want to crawl out of my own skin and I can scratch myself to bleeding point with no relief whatsoever.
  • My need to eat food is relentless. If I don't eat I feel like my stomach is 'eating itself'.
  • I can't sleep
  • My body temperature is all over the place, freezing one minute, boiling the next.
  • I feel a constant need to scream. I call this my internal scream.

I don't need to tell you that agitation is HELL. Pure and simple.

After 48 hours of this (day AND night), I decided to go back on a half-dose of Aripiprazole. It has taken me a few days to settle down again but I did feel an immediate improvement. I started to sleep again and the insects went to sleep too. Bliss.

As a result, it looks like I have had to choose the lesser of two evils: slight nausea and constant headache versus sheer hell.

In truth, it is difficult to tell whether what I experienced was a withdrawal episode or a true reflection of what the anti-psychotic is doing for me but I do know this:

  1. Agitation is what I was put on Aripiprazole for in the first place so this collection of hellish symptoms is not new to me.
  2. It's incredible how quickly I can forget how bad things were before any medication. A couple of months down the line and I simply lose sight of how bad things used to be. This is dangerous because it can cause us (I am convinced we all function in that way) to become non-compliant.
  3. When suffering from constant nausea and headaches, it is hard to remember that things can be worse. It's as if one set of 'painful symptoms' displaces - eradicates even - another set of symptoms.  I need to bear that in mind for the future.

As I write, I am feeling slow but comfortable.

After the agitation episode, forget the slow bit: comfort is king

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is now ten years later (January 2024) and this is the situation I am in regarding my medication.

After I took a turn for the worse and was I hospitalised, my psychiatrist and I had to come to the conclusion that  NO MEDICATION was going to eradicate the severe depression I had been living with for many years. The only treatment that gives me relief from my depression is Electro-Convulsive Therapy (ECT) which I now have as Maintenance ECT every four weeks.

Having said that my medication to which I refer as "my little cocktail" does an excellent job of controling and managing the terrible hypomania I also lived with for many years. I sleep at night which is a joy and I am relatively stable. As a result I am very protective of my little cocktail and I resist any attempt by my psychiatrist to alter it any way.

For the record, shown below is the ist of medications I have tried over the years in different dosages and at different times  during the day - some of them with ghastly side effects. The ones marked with an asterisk are my little cocktail, i.e. the medications I am on now.  At night I take 500mg Carbamazepine (mood stabiliser) + 45mg Mirtazapine (antidepressant)  + 15mg Aripiprazole (antipsychotic), and at lunchtime I take another 300mg Carbamazepine [so 800mg daily].. For some reason that is not fully understood by anyone, this combination works well for me in helping me cope with at least one half of my bipolar disorder and I am grateful for it. [By the way my experience with medications is in no way unusual for many Bi-Polar Landers].

List of medications:

  1. Amitriptyline
  2. Dothiepin
  3. Lofepramine
  4. Citalopram
  5. Fluoxetine
  6. *  Carbamazepine
  7.  Quetiapin (Seroquel)
  8. Lorazepam
  9. Depakote
  10. Chlorpromazine
  11. Procyclidine
  12. Olanzapine
  13. *  Mirtazapine
  14. Lithium carbonate
  15. Zimovane
  16. Escitalopram
  17. Prothiaden
  18. *  Aripiprazole