experiences with Seroquel / quetiapine?

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so... my doctor wants me to take Seroquel / quetiapine for anxiety, and to augment my anti-depressant (Zoloft). he is concerned i am not sleeping enough and he thinks it is causing anxiety. the Seroquel is supposed to help me sleep.

years ago i was diagnosed with Generalised Anxiety Disorder by a psychiatrist, but the psychologist who did my formal aspie diagnosis in May thinks that my anxiety is more likely caused by post-traumatic stress disorder / PTSD (from a bunch of extremely difficult events) and also caused by my asperger's syndrome.

my anxiety levels (along with my depression) are bad enough that my doctor has scheduled weekly appointments to keep an eye on me and i have two therapists helping me as well. i don't really want to say how bad it has been getting, but i will *always* seek help instead of doing anything rash.

i've tried several medicines to sleep, and most of them caused extreme depression (valerian root, zopiclone) or they are too addictive (ativan, clonazepam, gravol), or i had an allergic reaction (melatonin). to be honest, ativan was miraculous at night but also the effects carried over for part of the day. i normally am jumpy and twitchy and i frequently feel like i have electric shocks through my body and face, which i didn't realise... until the sensations stopped...

the doctor has referred me to a psychiatrist to manage my medicines better and to get me through this difficult period, but it will take a couple months to get in to see them.

basically, i am afraid to take the Seroquel. i read up on the side effects and i am too scared. my mother took a high dose on a daily basis and it made her tired and caused her to dissociate. i also think her memory was maybe affected. i have otehr reasons why i have bad associations of my mother taking Seroquel that i don't want to go into here.

has anyone here taken it, or do you know someone who took it? i think i probably should put my big girl panties on and swallow the damn pill. thoughts?

I used to take seroquel and it is a particularly good one for both anxiety and sleep. It is shorter acting and often works well at low doses so you can sleep and have the bulk of it out of your system in the morning (after you get used to it).

If you don't have to drive, you can also take it early during annoying family gatherings.

i took seroquel
depending on how you operate, it can or cant work
that stuff KNOCKED ME OUT. literally. Knocked me out. I was constantly groggy and everything.

I took it for years. I was the same way.

o ok... so high levels of drowsiness are the biggest side effects you had, 886 and John_Browning? i worry about that as i need to be able to work (i don't drive), but i also worry about sleepwalking and tardive dyskenesia. did you two take them long term or short term?

how did you get through life so groggy? were you able to go to school or work?

I only took it for 2 weeks.. I didn't like being to groggy. I personally can't be, I work 13 hours a night, I can't risk being too tired.

I was able to function during the day but I always had that feeling lingering that I had overslept.

I'm like the others. 100mg's or more and I'm sleeping 15 to 20 hours (I'm fairly sensitive to meds). Recently I have tried some seroquel XR, and because of the extended release I didn't get so tired. I've only had 2 days of sample packs for the Seroquel XR, but I was happy enough with the results to actually buy some for further evaluation.
I really wish I didn't need to take it at all, but it helps me out a lot. Remember, medicines will react differently for everybody, so, what might work for me might not for you.
Best wishes.

On it.

The drowsiness does eventually ablate, but it's always there to some extent, as it's due to the anti-histamine action of the drug, and that's not really something one gets tolerant to. I'm kinda running "real high" in the anxiety department, so I don't appear to suffer from the same sedation as many, plus I'm larger than the average bear.

At low doses (25 to 100 depending on your size and tolerance), it's effective for anxiety due to the sedative effects, and also the antiadrenergic effects that help with the physical symptoms of anxiety. The possible bad side-effects come into play with higher doses that affect dopamine. My cousin is on it for schizophrenia, and she has the tardive dyskinesia from the high dose needed to keep the hallucinations and whatnot away.

As always, you weigh it all up.

Trying the lowest dose possible if you're planning to take it is always the best way. Though do note, the lowest dose will make you feel like someone hit you with a horse tranq to begin with, well, it did to me, but now I can function fine at four times that much.

Good stuff if you can't sleep.

we're in the same province!! ! i'm in deadmonton. wow 15 to 20 hous of sleep. but obviously it is helping. tough choice.


Dillogic, thank you for the scientific background. i like knowing those things and lately i don't have the attention span to research things myself, so i especially appreciate your information. my dose is supposed to be 50mg, but like Ojib i am sensitive to meds so i will usually take a quarter dose or so at first just to get used to it.

i don't get into a really deep sleep and after 4 to 5 hours i am wide awake. i usually attempt to force myself to sleep more but it doesn't work very well. i've even tried functioning on this amount of sleep (thinking that maybe it will be natural for me to get this amount of sleep instead of 7 to 10 hours like i used to get) but after a few days it makes me irritable, forgetful, distractible, anxious, susceptible to illness/migraines.

I only sleep that long if I take a 100mg or more. I usually take 25mg in the morning and 50mg at night to put me out, and I get about 10 hours of sleep. Some nights I need to add an ativan or take more seroquel, but my doctors ok with me doing that.

The max allowable dosage for seroquel is 1200mgs. For anxiety and sleep, the dose is almost always no more than 300mgs. I typically did well on 100 and most of the time I found 150 to be too much unless I was manic. I know someone that used to take seroquel for anxiety and depression and she usually only took 12.5mgs because most of the time 25mgs was a butt-kicker for her. You can play with the dose a lot to find what works for you. You don't have to worry about tardive dyskenisia at the extremely low dosages you would get. But however much sugar, simple carbs, and alcohol you consume, cut it drastically because even a little seroquel will cause weight gain from sugars. If you smoke, you might require higher dosage than if you didn't smoke. Oh, and last of all, if you have a really fatty dinner, the seroquel might not kick in until late at night or maybe even not at all since fat blocks it's absorption.

You had an addictive response to clonezapam, Hyper? I'd thought that was one of the less addictive benzos, and at least for me one of the most useful. In the .5mg dose I've used them as a preventative anxiety drug, I take them when I know I'm going into a stressful situation (busy day at work, AS meeting I'm hosting, etc) and as a "sleep prep" drug to get me in the mood for sleep when I'm caught up in something. They also seem to synergize with Ambien to help that keep me asleep all night and actually get rest, I think it's due to their subtleness and longer effect. My chemistry is unusual even for an Aspie, but I've never had an addiction issue with them or the harder hitting alprazolam, which I use for acute and unexpected anxiety. I tease my boss by showing him my pillbox and telling him that one pill is for when I think he's going to piss me off, the other for when he surprises me with it... : lol: You can tell I have a relatively cool boss in that he actually thinks that's pretty funny. Of course he also thinks it's funny when I tell him about the terrible things I've done to bad bosses I've had before him, so maybe he's just got a screw loose too.

I took Seroquel briefly years ago pre-diagnosis as a general anti-depressant and sleep aid, kinda reminded me of trazadone if you've ever had that. I guess it just zombifies some people, but I never experienced that, it just never worked very well for me.

Its very sedating and You'll have a huge urge to eat if you fight it - so you'll gain more weight.

On it ... 50 mg at night, 25 in the morning.

At first it gave me really bad nightmares. I woke up every night sweating and cold. This has lessened. It does make me feel a bit separated from myself (if that makes any sense.)

But, Serequel helps me to cope with sensory processing issues and curbs my anxiety.

Dox47 thanks for sharing those experiences. it made me laugh that you showed that to your boss and made a joke of it.

no, i never did have an addictive response, but i was pre-emptively concerned about addiction, and i convinced the doctor to be concerned too. there are a lot of addictions in my family so i always want to be careful - i used to get daily migraines and took codeine on a regular basis for treatment and it probably took me 3 months to wean off of it so i am wary (now i takea low dose of bisoprolol/blood pressure medicine instead and only rarely take anything stronger than acetaminophen). it never did work as well as ativan though. clonazepam gives me wicked headaches if i take it in the daytime.

i haven't tried ambien. i haven't taken tradazone either.