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  • BDD Moderators: Keif’ Richards

is this seroquel withdrawl?

gloeek

gloeek

Bluelighter
Joined
Oct 18, 2009
Messages
13,576
ok so i've been taking seroquel xr 400 mgs for awhile and I was feeling A LOT better emotionally so I cold turkey stopped taking it 3 or 4 days ago. Ever since I have felt like COMPLETE shit. I'm shaking, have this really weird headache, feel nauseous, am grinding my teeth, can't sleep at all. I really feel like I'm about to die. I was even crying earlier. I'm sure this is seroquel withdrawl, but the thing is I started back a relatively high dose of adderall this week as well. Could some of the symptoms be from the adderall? It's never caused anything like this before though. Well, maybe the teeth grinding. I just picked up some seroquel xr 50 mg tablets and took 2 of them. Do you think that will be enough to make the symptoms subside? I really want to get off this shit though so what's a good tapering system? Anyone know?

Also, I take 300 mgs of thorazine, 4 mgs of ativan, and 1200 mgs of lithium.

any help will be greatly appreciated. thanks
 
Were you taking Adderall with the Seroquel before you went cold turkey?

If so, and you're still taking the Adderall now, I could see the combination of antipsychotic discontinuation + amphetamines giving you those symptoms...
 
hmmm...I didn't think about that one. I used to take adderall all the time without seroquel, but for the past 6 months I've been taking it with seroquel besides the past few days. What would help make it go away??? Do you know?
 
If you need to take the Adderall I would reduce the dose of the Adderall or start taking Seroquel again and contact your doctor. I would recommend that you talk to them about tapering down off the Seroquel.

I'm not 100% sure because I'm not that familiar with Seroquel in general - but I bet somebody will chime in sooner or later. In the meantime, I would consider reducing the Adderall dose or increasing the Seroquel dose - at least increasing it to the point where your symptoms start to go away.
 
I would agree glo, Seroquel is a dopamine antagonist (at 400mgs, anyway) where as Adderall is a dopamine agonst - so they have opposing actions. There's more to it than that obviously but it would explain why you are getting these symptoms - your Adderall dose may have been the one you needed while you were on the Seroquel but without the dopamine antagonism it's too high by the sounds of it. The problem with just taking a lower dose of Seroquel is that at lower doses it just acts as an antihistamine, it doesn't have the dopamine antagonist properties.. I can't remember the exact dose ranges though, I'm sorry..

In general it is best not to stop taking Seroquel abruptly as even without the Adderall you can get a discontinuation reaction, with anxiety, fast heart rate, dizziness, headache, tremor and other symptoms too.. usually doctors will advise you to taper down from it. Would you be able to go and see your doctor to discuss coming off the Seroquel and adjusting your Adderall dose maybe? With psych meds (all meds really) it's usually best to make any changes under the guidance of a doctor, and given that you are on Thorazine, lithium and Ativan too any changes would need to be done carefully to see if the doses of your other meds need changing as well.

Good luck, I hope you start feeling better soon!
 
I took 100 mgs almost an hour ago and I'm feeling A LOT better. Extremely tired though. However, I did take the 100 mgs of seroquel with 4 mgs of Ativan. I don't know. I'm just happy to feel better. Gosh when you're on a lot of psychoactive drugs it's hard to know what's going on and what's doing what.
 
How long have you been taking benzos for? If you've got a tolerance, 4mg of Ativan isn't a lot, but if you don't have a tolerance, 4mg of Ativan is certainly a good enough amount to make a difference.
 
I've been taking benzos forever, but I detoxed from them over a year ago and then I started taking ambien for my insomnia, but I built up such a tolerance that 30 mgs of ambien wasn't working anymore so I decided to take a break from ambien and take a light benzo for sleep. It doesn't really put me to sleep, but it relaxes me a little. I'lll probably start back on the ambien next week.
 
Ambien (Zolpidem) is technically in the benzo class from what I understand; they have similar mechanisms of action. So to say - having a tolerance for one means a tolerance for the other (which explains the quickly built tolerance to Ambien, and why the light benzo only relaxes you after stopping the Ambien).

Good luck! I can't add anything re seroquel as I don't have any particular knowledge on that.
 
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