Harm Reduction olanzapine withdrawal-advice needed, please

[tyler5]

I have taken olanzapine 30mg daily for two months now.
my methadone doctor writes it to me to combat insomnia.
to be honest, it has lost all its sleep inducing effects so i have just taken 2x15mg each night about an hour or two before bed.

since there is no use in continuing this thienobenzodiazepine, i want to get off it.
i searched for threads regarding its wd and found one where some pretty scary stuff was written.
the OP was tapering from 30mg also IIRC and was doing it in 2.5mg increments.
it will take a hell of a long time to get from 30mg to 2.5mg and i would dare to say would only make the wd worse because you keep on taking the drug for far longer than if you tapered at bigger doses.

what i really need is advice on how to go about this? i get 15mg tabs so tapering at 2.5mg is pretty much out of the question since the 15mg tabs are almost exactly the size of a clonazepam tablet but since olanzapine is only available as a tablet that you let melt in your mouth, i dont think it is possible to half the 15mg tabs into 7.5mg and definitely not into 3.75mg increments.

if no one has experience with this drug, can someone at least enlighten me on what the hell it exactly is?
i read on wikipedia that its an atypical antipsychotic

wtf8), why was i written an atypical antipsychotic for sleep purposes?
also, is a thienobenzodiazepine basically the same as a benzodiazepine? if so, how alike they are meaning can i use a benzo like clonazepam or diazepam to withdraw instead or is the thieno in front of the benzodiazepine a sign that its a different drug than a regular benzo,.

finally, i am NOT taking the most popular and most used version of the drug that has olanzapine(thienobenzodiazepine)+Prozac(SSRI) in it. maybe thats why my methadone doc thought it would be ok for sleep.

in conclusion, please help me understand how exactly should I go with this situation? if needed i can get 10mg or 5mg tabs of olanzapine prescribed aswell but right now im thinking that since im not taking the popular version of the drug with Prozac also in it but just olanzapine itself, i dont even need to withdraw if i am already taking benzodiazepines.

i hope someone smarter can help me figure this all out, i'm pretty bummed that i am taking 30mg of this and it isnt doing a thing, maybe a very tiny bit sleepier but i could achieve the same thing with 2mg of xanax.

any info on this drug and its withdrawal would be more than appreciated. thank You in advance for the help/replys

 

[Kid Amine]

Olanzapine (Zyprexa) made me pork up to almost 250 lbs, gave me type 2 diabetes, and did jack shit for me too. It was prescribed to me at 20mg/day because all other sleep pills had failed. I OD'd on H while on Zyprexa, found out Zyprexa is bad shit, and quit cold turkey. I did not notice any problems, my diabetes went away (couldnt even spike my blood sugar by drinking 3L of Mountain Dew in 6 hours), my weight started dropping. Zyprexa should be prescribed only for true nutjobs, nowadays it's Seroquel the docs hand out like candy, a drug possibly worse than Olanzapine. I dont usually advise cold detoxes of anything, 30mg a day is a LOT, but you've only been on it 2 months. I was on 20mg a day for years when I stopped taking it.

The other reason your methadone doc might have used it for sleep is that, afaik, when on methadone, all benzos are out, including the benzo-like sleep drugs Zolpidem and Zopiclone. That leaves you little in the way of meds that will put you to sleep. You could try something like Motrin PM (works sometimes for me), or go OLD SCHOOL and ask for Chloral Hydrate (which apparently needs alcohol to work - I found it inefective).

 

[tyler5]

Thank You for the reply, Kid Amino!

If so, I can understand all the negative side effects as im one the people who think anti-depressants in general are evil but there are some that are straight up dicks. Prozac ranks way up there with Paxil (Paroxetine) or the worst - Effexor (Venlafaxine).

Anyone else, feel free to let me know how olanzapine or olanzapine/prozac worked for You and how did You eventually get free from it?

the tablets i have are meant to be put ON your tongue and then just let it melt.

Kid Amine: no, thats not it. he is fine prescribing me 100mg diazepam a week (i take more than that a DAY, lol, but since its dirt cheap and available i might as well buy them out.

Before having to go to my methadone doc for scripts, I had a wonderful psychiatrist (R.I.P) who would write You two boxes (60 tabs) of Pfizer 1mg Xanax footballs and 6 boxes (60 tabs, there are 10 tabs in one box lol) of triazolam TWICE a month.
One time during my worst when i was taking 12-16mg xanax a day in different benzos throughout the day, I went to her, got my scripts, bought them out, then returned 2 days later and said that i really need new scripts because i was robbed near the pharmacy by two junkies who held a knife in their hands while i had to give my 120 tabs (60 xanax, 60 halcion).

she wrote me new scripts, no questions asked.

a wonderful psychiatrist too in that she actually listened to what the patients were saying and wasnt doing everything as the drug rep who comes by with free mouse pads, pens, nice posters for the wall where the SSRI it was trying to peddle was nicely featured. ugh.

 

[Kid Amine]

i was just on Zyprexa, not any cocktail of AAPs and SSRIs or tricyclics. My doc actually had to give me pharma rep samples because I had no insurance, and back in ~2000, Zyprexa was expensive shit as there was no generic. I got free of it when I got home from my OD, googled "Zyprexa", and found out that like 20%, not 2%, of patients reported type 2 diabetes (there is no family history there). I was like 'fuck this' and quit cold turkey - never even saw my shrink again. Had no ill effects, tho quitting Valium cold turkey SUCKED BIG TIME, any benzo will need a taper, and I also got off of methadone by decreasing my dose from 20mg/day to 0 over the course of 4 MONTHS. The last 10mg pill I had, I cut it into 10 lines, then quartered those lines (40 tiny piles of powder, approx 250micrograms ea). Methadone is easy to get off of, but 99+% of people do it too fast and jump off at double digit milligram doses. Thats why they fail. I never had a single craving or anything, and stayed completely opiate free for over 5 years (before going back,but thats another story for another day)

 

[tyler5]

i was just on Zyprexa, not any cocktail of AAPs and SSRIs or tricyclics.

were you consuming any benzodiazepines daily during the time you quit Olanzapine cold turkey?
and I assume You had the version of the drug which contains only Olanzapine and not Olanzapine+Prozac in which case a slow taper would be absolutely necessary.

to those who were able to quit and suffered no withdrawals - you did take benzos during that time period, right? Olanzapine is a thienobenzodiazepine so it equals to other benzos like xanax, klonopin etc.

that is very good to hear from at least some of You, that I can drop this poison right now and just like that. lucky that i have been taking it for 2-3 months.

thank you all who have replied with their experiences.

how fast did the beer belly disappear for all of you?

 

[xtcgrrrl]

I take Zyprexa, I'm one of the "crazies" for whom it's prescribed for bipolar, LOL. I take 5 mg and it doesn't make me sleepy at all. I used to take 10 mg and that knocked me out and made it hard to wake me up in the morning. So I went down to 7.5, then down to 5, then to 2.5, then back up to 5, because that seems to be the most effective dosage. I didn't gain any weight from the drug (in fact I've lost 60 lbs WHILE on this med. Baby weight, y'know.) I tried to stop taking the medicine a couple years ago and I found that my sleep was all messed up. I tried for THREE MONTHS to go without it and I STILL was unable to get REM sleep. I would struggle to get to sleep all night, and near morning I might drift into a light sleep where I was half asleep/half awake. So I just accepted the fact that I'll die on this medicine and went back on it. It DOES control my bipolar, inasmuch as it can be controlled. When not depressed, I don't need to take anything else (I've recently been very depressed about my medical situation, so I've been on an antidepressant too, Pamelor.) I still have "ups and downs" but they're more NORMAL ups and downs, the type regular people have, not the extremes that bipolar people suffer. I still cry easily but that's just my damn tear ducts. And then I've got my INSANE anxiety disorder, for which I've self-prescribed etizolam, since no doctor in his right mind is going to let me get near a benzo again (that was the original drug I was addicted to...Xanax...and I went INSANE on it, abusing it like crazy. Etizolam DOES NOT give me a high, so I can take it exactly as I need to - 1-2 pills morning, noon, and night, totaling no more than 6 mg a day. And I'll die on etizolam too because I'm never going through benzo WD again. And I NEED a drug like this to control my anxiety, which is so bad without it I get blackout panic attacks, am unable to leave my BEDROOM let alone the front door, etc etc.)

ANYWAY. The point to this saga is that, Zyprexa, when used THERAPEUTICALLY on people who need it, DOES NOT need to be the "demon drug." It's helped me a lot. I'm sure there are a lot of other people out there it's helped as well. Yes, there are health risks, but these can be minimized by 1) taking a low dose 2) taking it as prescribed 3) if you intend to get off it, make your duration of use SHORT. I was on it for YEARS before I tried to quit. I couldn't quit it, but that turned out ok, because it works for me. So. That's my 2 cents on the subject.