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Can Seroquel act as an antidepressant?

ParappaTheRapper said:
Has anyone mixed this with alcohol? Meaning, how many hours after how many number of drinks do you have to wait to dose your seroquel script?
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I know of 2 people that where taking Quetiapine and had seizures when they drank on it. Most anti-psychotics Quetiapine included lower the seizure threshold and so does alcohol and the threat of a seizure seems to be pretty real with this combo seeing as i know of 2 people personally that have had seizures from this mix. Seroquel IR's have a half life of about 5.5 hours so i would wait atleast 24 hours before drinking just to be safe.

Also Quetiapine as it is a CNS depressant due to it's strong anti-histamine effects and also the anti-cholinergic effects of it's metabolite Norquetiapine can also increase the overdose risk from any CNS depressant including alcohol. I take 300-400mg's of Quetiapine a day along with 150mg's of morphine and 6mg's of clonazepam but i have a tolerance to opiates and benzos. I find Seroquel to add to the sedation in such a way as to overpower other CNS depressants so i don't take it anywhere near the time i am going to get high. It just overpowers any of the euphoria
 
wezface said:
Atypical antipsychotics can occasionally be really helpful as augmented therapies for treatment resistant depression. I found I had been doing SSRIs for a long time with no relief, but I started on aripiprazole and had almost instant relief. Since it prevents the reuptake of dopamine your brain has to make more (I think? Can anyone confirm this?) and apparently my big problem was dopamine. I am also on an SNRI (milnacipran hcl) for my fibromyalgia and that hadn't helped either.
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If you think you need more dopamine serquel would be the opposite of what you want.
 
i wanna pop in here and just for the sake of harm reduction and bluelight say i spoke to a doctor about this.

Its obviously really confidential on all fronts.

But, he said drinking and seroquel is not a dangerous combination at all. He said they don't synergize. Or if if your drunk and take it there's no resperatory depression etc.
 
wezface said:
Yeah I'm finding this out. Slipping back down. But it's a dopamine reuptake inhibitor, yes?
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Seroquel is a Dopamine antagonist at the D2 receptor among a few others. But as it doesn't bind to the D2 receptor very strongly it seems to cause less EPS and TD then most other anti-psychotics.
 
Seroquel is pretty much the polar opposite of a dopamine reuptake inhibitor. If it does bind to DAT it only does so very weakly and its effects as a dopamine receptor blocker probably outweigh any stimulation.
 
^ I find that Quetiapine does help my bipolar depression especially when taken with Lamotrigine and Bupropion. It also helps offset some of the negative effects of Bupropion such as feeling too stimulated when taking it first or upping the dose. Quetiapine does have some anti-depressant properties on it's own for me but maybe that's just because it stops the racing thoughts in my head. Or perhaps the NRI effect of the metabolite Norquetiapine as well as the anti-cholinergic effects it has helps the depression. I have heard that drugs that act on the Muscarinic 3 receptor such as Scopolamine and other anti-muscarinics.
 
Anticholinergics do have some antidepressant properties. They were most commonly used in the 1950s and 1960s when there weren't many other options for treating depression. Ditran, which is actually a pretty strong anticholinergic deliriant, was used as an antidepressant at one point, although I'm not sure if more than a handful of patients ever used it. Obviously most people can't tolerate the side-effects of anticholinergic compounds.

That being said, I doubt that Seroquel is producing antidepressant effects via muscarinic blockade.
 
My psych has always maintained 25-50mg for sleep aid, 100-250mg for mood stabiliser, 250-400mg for antidepressant and 400mg+ for anti psychotic/mania
 
The idea here is targeting d2 autoreceptors, like with Amisulpride, am I right?


wiki said:
At low doses, it is also used to treat dysthymia where it appears to be at least as effective as conventional antidepressants according to a recent Cochrane review. Studies showed that at dose < 50mg amisulpride has preferential affinity for pre-synaptic dopamine D2 and D3 autoreceptor subtypes (pre-synaptics autoreceptors serves as a negative feedback loop control). By blocking these autoreceptors amisulpride is preventing neurons to stop firing dopamine, leading to an increase of dopamine concentration in the brain. This mode of action could explain its strong antidepressant properties.
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To the OP,

Yes, it is prescribed to treat bipolar people when they feel depressed.
 
serotonin2A said:
Anticholinergics do have some antidepressant properties. They were most commonly used in the 1950s and 1960s when there weren't many other options for treating depression. Ditran, which is actually a pretty strong anticholinergic deliriant, was used as an antidepressant at one point, although I'm not sure if more than a handful of patients ever used it. Obviously most people can't tolerate the side-effects of anticholinergic compounds.

That being said, I doubt that Seroquel is producing antidepressant effects via muscarinic blockade.
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Yes but lately there has been interest in using Scopolamine as a anti-depressant. One mechanism i have heard that may be responsible for it's anti-depressant effects is it's action as a Muscarinic 3 receptor antagonist. I have taken it in the past for nausea and vomiting as well as stomach cramps as it's OTC here so easy to get and i did notice some anti-depressant effects from it. Though this could very well have been due to the fact that it helped the pain in my guts more then some anti-depressant action. I don't find Scopolamine to be very unpleasant at all in medical doses but i certainly wouldn't take doses needed to produce a Datura like delirium.

But Quetiapine's action as a anti-cholinergic is next to none and it's metabolite Norquetiapine is probably nowhere as near a strong anti-cholinergic as Olanzapine or many of the typicals such as Chlorpromazine, Methotrimeprazine, Perphenazine, etc.

isocortex said:
My psych has always maintained 25-50mg for sleep aid, 100-250mg for mood stabiliser, 250-400mg for antidepressant and 400mg+ for anti psychotic/mania
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I haven't found Seroquel to have any mood stabilizing, anti-depressant or anti-manic properties under 200mg's a day. I doubt that at 200mg's a day or less it would be acting as anything other then a H1 antagonist and Adrenergic antagonist. I don't think it starts acting as a Serotonin antagonist at anything under 200mg's and i can only guess at what dose it would start acting significantly as a D2 antagonist. I have never known or even heard of anyone developing Tardive Dyskinesia or any other EPS symptoms really from Seroquel alone. Though some people do get restless leg syndrome fairly badly from it that could be caused by the H1 antagonism as well as it's mild anti-cholinergic effects. I haven't seen anyone get movement disorders from it like i have seen with Abilify, Risperidone, Haldol, Clopixol or even high dose Olanzapine. So i doubt it acts as much of a Dopamine Antagonist
 
Smoky said:
Yup^
I have a little bipolar in me, not extreme. I got on Paxil once and I felt very compulsive, but at the same time, I accomplished a lot scholastically I wouldn't have without it. Double edge for me..
Odd, cos SNRI's especially Strattera knocks me out, put me in bed for 2 weeks when I started it.. but worked thereafter once I was maintained on it.
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Paxil is okay. When I scored my doctor suspected I was borderline bipolar, he prescribed me Seroquel. However, I can´t imagine Seroquel working for me as anti depressant. The only gives me extreme laziness, tiredness,
I´m always sleepy, put on 8 pounds and have a really hard time to get out of bed. Once I took 2 pills of 200 mg by mistake and I started having restlessness, I felt like horrible. Couldn´t deal with that. Does anyone has similar experiences?
 
There is a lot to consider with your question. First ETOH can lower magnesium. Seroquel can prolong your QT on EKG. Combination can put you into a fatal rythm and you die from V Tach.

How long should wait to take your seroquel? I would wait one hour for each drink, If you drink 12 drinks, wait 12 hours. Whoops forgot to ask you how your liver is, if you have liver disease you should double that or even triple it. So 12 drinks wait 36 hours.
 
Heh, this is one of my favorite pieces of investigative blogging.

http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/02/how_seroquel_xr_works_part_1.html
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/02/how_seroquel_xr_works_part_2.html
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/03/swallow_this_how_seroquel_xr_w.html

Epilogue:
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/08/4_unintended_consequences_of_s.html

If I had to guess, Seroquel's antidepressant effects actually are more comparable to those of trazodone, and rest in alpha-1 antagonism and 5-ht2a antagonism (also properties of trazodone), which (alpha-1) reduces anxiety and (5-ht2a) diminishes the "depressive thought-loop" effect, where depressed people ruminate excessively over things that don't matter, though I'm basing the latter inference on an analogy to one of the more undesirable side-effects of psychedelics.

paranoid_android: Am I guessing right? Or can you tell? :p

NRIs aren't even antidepressant or we'd just prescribe Strattera, which is more selective for NET than quetiapine and has correspondingly way fewer side-effects. (Intuition speaking) SNRIs are popular because NET inhibition offsets the side-effects of SERT inhibition, not because of an antidepressant effect of norepinephrine.

(actually, IIRC higher norepinephrine levels are actually correlated with depression)
 
Well the a court settlement of 520 million said that is not. Seroquel is a heavy duty medication. It was being prescribed for off-lable aggression, Alzheimer disease, anger management, anxiety, ADHD, bipolar maintenance, dementia, depression, mood disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and sleeplessness. The lawsuit was brought about by a whistle-blower lawsuit, lmfao. I was put on it for sleeplessness, and when I went for suboxone treatment I was told I had diabetes, stopped taking it lost 50 pounds and felt great with no more diabetes. The only use I see for it if you're not psychotic is that it will stop a bad acid trip in its tracks. I seen one clinic where nearly every office product had a seroquel logo, with a giant banner in the waiting room...
 
seroquel will make you more depressed, it'll make you not want to get out of bed IMO
 
Erikmen said:
Paxil is okay. When I scored my doctor suspected I was borderline bipolar, he prescribed me Seroquel. However, I can´t imagine Seroquel working for me as anti depressant. The only gives me extreme laziness, tiredness,
I´m always sleepy, put on 8 pounds and have a really hard time to get out of bed. Once I took 2 pills of 200 mg by mistake and I started having restlessness, I felt like horrible. Couldn´t deal with that. Does anyone has similar experiences?
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Oh, I know those rl symptoms from Seroquel. Horrible! I could never take more than 50 mg, drove my legs crazy and I ate too many carbs. It's really difficult in the morning too with that drug. Low low dose works well for sleep, but I don't think for depression unless it's bipolar type. And even that I wouldn't suggest it.
Definitely not for regular depression… more for mood disorders. Serotonin more for dp. Also, Seroquel is great for stimulant comedowns, or crack. Used to take it coming off crack, helped with cravings too ime. And, also opiate agitation and lack of sleep.
 
Seroquel always made me really depressed and antisocial taking it nightly that was at 100 mgs. I slept heavy though great for insomnia or if you're having a bad trip and need an emergency exit.
 
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