Mental Health scared, brain supersensitized--how do I get off of 500mg of seroquel xr?

[davidray]

my brain has been through the ringer.

I took benzos for 8 years then 4 years ago I cold-turkeyed klonopin and wound up ill for a year. I eventually gave in and reinstated to try to taper on valium...but at the end of the taper the drug turned paradoxical and I would up attempting suicide. I was hospitalized and put on seroquel xr. I have never had any diagnosis except GAD, I've just been fucked up by psych drugs (and my own naiveté and stupidity about them).

so now I've been on seroquel three years and have tried to taper several times without success. the first was a disaster, during the second I got too cocky and tried to cut from 150 to 100mg all at once and the symptoms became overwhelming. messing up tapering has super sensitized my brain to the point that I am now hesitant to even taper 5mg at a time. I am holding my dose for now.

since the last failed taper effort I have started getting severe nerve pain in my head. I feel like the tissue below my scalp is inflamed. this lasts many hours. additionally I feel like a zombie. I have no idea what to do about this. I eat well and sleep decently. but this is a mess and I'm scared I am just replaying my benzo nightmare except with worse results since what drug could help me after this?

any feedback or advice welcome. thanks for taking the time to read this.

 

[jammin83]

Hey Dave,

Hang in there man. I'm about to go to my second job, but I'll give you a shout in the next day or so.

 

[AlphaMethylPhenyl]

The incredible amount of pain you seem to be in when you taper makes me believe that staying on the medication for the foreseeable future might be a good idea. Seroquel shouldn't be that difficult to get off of.

 

[SixBuckets]

Coming off psychiatric medication is incredibly difficult - especially antipsychotics like Seroquel. Are you doing this under medical supervision? I'd really advise trying to taper yourself off antipsychotics without medical support if you have a history of suicide attempts.

What's your health insurance/health support system like where you are? (I don't know too much about the US) Are you able to do a few weeks at an inpatient facility while you detox?

You may need to consider that what you are experiencing is actually symptoms, not just the withdrawal effect of the drug. It's incredibly hard to tell the difference, though, and I don't envy you trying to figure it out.

Good luck!

 

[SixBuckets]

Oh, you might also want to see a doctor about the neuropathic pain. It's easy to attribute everything to "medication side effects" when you're unhappily medicated, but neuropathic pain isn't a common side effect of antipsychotics. It might be something else and you don't want it to go untreated.

 

[jammin83]

First off, that's a whole lot of seroquel for anxiety. I really wish they wouldn't use APs for anxiety but I know it's becoming more common. Over-sensitization is sign of withdrawal not original symptoms. For some people, seroquel can be really difficult to get off of. It doesn't really cause terrible withdrawals for me, but zyprexa was a nightmare that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. I have been in AP withdrawal for almost a year now. There were definitely some rough patches to put it lightly. You really need to make sure you are stabilized before you reinstate a taper. I think that previous rapid tapers of benzos or other psych drugs can lead to more difficult withdrawals for people, but that is just my opinion. I don't know about the scalp thing, but I have had no less than a hundred different symptoms at various points in my withdrawal, so it really wouldn't surprise me.

Once you destabilize your nervous system, most of the time the symptoms appear to be neurological in addition to the original withdrawal symptoms. I have been off of seroquel for a couple of days now and I am feeling okay, I will be relieved to be off of APs. Mostly I get some insomnia (what's new), and bit of an overdrive feeling and some crazy itching thanks to that histamine reaction. I am beginning to be able to tolerate weed and caffeine again thankfully, so I am making some headway but still have some withdrawal symptoms for sure. When this whole thing is over, I am going to have a big ass party because it has been seriously fucked up for me.

Once you feel ready to start tapering, you should taper at 10% every three of four weeks. You taper 10% of the previous dose, not the original dose. If the withdrawal is too severe you may want to try only 5 %. Some people that have a really difficult time utilize micro-tapering with daily cuts of much less than 10 %. This may be the way to go if you are having a hard time. I have a friend that is doing this with zyprexa and she is having some success, so that should be some encouragement. Unfortunately, pharmaceutical companies don't really give a shit about you trying to get off of the stuff and make it really hard to taper appropriately with available formulations. Most people utilize mg scales(about $20 on amazon) and or volumetric dosing. For volumetric dosing you crush your pills and make a suspension in water and use an oral syringe to dose. I don't know how that effects the xr mechanism though, so it may make it more IR than XR.

The folks over at survivingantidepressants should be able to direct you further if you run into issues and people will be there to offer you support in this type of situation. I would recommend making an account over there and starting a thread in the intro section. They are really knowledgeable about getting off of psychiatric medication and have a lot of really solid information. The information can allow you to understand what is happening to you so you can distinguish what is withdrawal, rebound symptoms, and/or original symptoms. It's really important to arm yourself with as much info as possible because there can be times when things can be confusing.

Best of luck, let me know if you need anything, and welcome to BL.

edit: just wanted to add that magnesium and b12 have helped me a lot in my withdrawal and some people have good luck with fish oil as well. I would steer clear of most supplements and drugs but those have helped me a lot. AP withdrawal totally depletes magnesium levels (which can make you feel like shit to put it simply) so it's a really good idea.

 

[paranoid android]

If i where you i would go see a doctor and make sure that you don't have some underlying chronic pain condition. I have suffered from Neuropathic pain for about 12 years now i guess in the form of Trigeminal Neuralgia aka the suicide disease. Lucky me . I have also suffered from Migraines and weird tension headaches so i have been through the ringer pain wise that's for sure. Clonazepam is often used to treat TN and other Neuropathic pain disorders so it could be possible that you have some kind of neuropathic pain disorder that the benzodiazepines where covering up. I have never heard of Quetiapine being used to treat any type of pain but some older typical anti-psychotics namely Prochlorperazine (brand names Compazine, Stemetil, etc), Chlorpromazine (Thorazine aka Largactil) and Methotrimeprazine aka Levomepromazine are used along with Opiates to not only offset the nausea and vomiting caused by the pain and drugs themselves but they also add to the analgesic effect for some people. So perhaps Quetiapine can help with certain types of pain so who knows.

I myself have been on Clonazepam for maybe a decade now and Seroquel on and off for maybe 9 years. I was originally given Clonazepam for generalized anxiety, panic disorder and abit of social anxiety as well but i found that it helped my TN pain quite abit as well as the manic side of my Bipolar disorder. I have been on 6mg's a day for maybe 7 or 8 years now and i have only been off it once in that time period when i ran out of my script early because someone ended up eating about half my script on me. The most Seroquel i have ever been on at one time was 400mg's i think as i found that anymore then that really gave me the worst dry mouth ever after taking it that would last well into the afternoon. I always took Seroquel instant release as the Seroquel XR is not covered for me and is way to expensive for me to afford. I did have a few sample packs of Seroquel XR and i found that the increased dry mouth during the day really sucked though i would be willing to put up with it if i could get it covered because it did seem to help my mood more.

The only withdrawal symptoms i have ever gotten from Quetiapine where insomnia, nausea as well as a very runny nose which may have been due to some Histamine rebound effect as Quetiapine is a very potent H1 receptor antagonist. Nausea, vomiting, headaches, anxiety, over sensitivity to taste, smells, touch and every other senses and of course a return of original symptoms often with some interest added on are withdrawal symptoms which can occur from stopping Quetiapine as well as any other anti-psychotic really. I never found Seroquel to be very bad for causing withdrawal symptoms but Risperidone was a whole other story 8( . Coming off that one was plain scary but i have noticed from reading peoples experiences on here as well as what i have heard from people i know in real life that Risperidone and it's active metabolite Paliperidone aka Invega seem to be in a league of their own for causing horrible withdrawal symptoms.

Are you tapering off with the help of a doctor or are you doing this yourself? You should not as a rule taper off any psychiatric medication without the help of a doctor especially anti-psychotics as these drugs are not good ones to mess around with. Just a thought here but since Seroquel is a very strong anti-histamine maybe taking a anti-histamine such as Diphenhydramine, Doxylamine or if you can get a script for it Hydroxyzine would help.