Do you have bad reactions to medications?

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I just wondered how many other aspies have weird or adverse reactions to medications, either prescribed or over the counter.

A few I can't use are:

Prozac (causes me to go mad for want of a better word)

Contraceptive pills (give me a whole host of nasty mental & physical symptoms)

Paracetamol (makes me feels sick & dizzy)

Amoxicillin - antibiotic (makes my skin come out in a chicken pox style rash)

Mefenamic acid - painkiller/anti inflamatory (causes me to come out in very bad nettle rash)

I think people with AS react in different ways to drugs, legal or otherwise because our brains work in different ways to the 'NT' brain. Some of our chemical processes are different, so where a med would help one person, it could cause big trouble in someone with AS or Autism.

Like Luke Jackson says in his book Freaks, Geeks & Aspergers, he had a pre med drug before an operation that instead of sedating him, it made him feel like the floor was a bouncy castle.

Post your experiences with medications & see if I'm onto something.

I had a bad reaction to tetracycline mixed with Celexa once. I was on my cycle besides and the hormones probably mixed with that as well. I had intense pain in my ovaries like I had an ovarian cyst. The pain and swelling were in my uterus too, and extended all the way down almost to my knees. My intestines were swelling too, and hurt, and half the time I was contipated and the other half the time I had the runs. I felt like throwing up, I felt like I was going to pass out, I was cold and I was shaking, I felt depressed and so anxious I was panicking, I had some shortness of breath too. I thought I was going to die right there in the library restroom where I was. I moaned, sat on the toilet and rocked back and forth, bent backwards until I was touching the floor to relieve some of the swelling and pain, squirmed, tried to sleep, shook uncontrollably, and prayed and tried to think fo happy things. A woman came into the bathroom, saw me half sitting, half lying on the floor and moaning and asked me if anything was wrong. I only told her some of my symptoms. She asked if she should go get help. I said "I guess so" but she didn`t, and she left the bathroom. Soon I felt well enough to go to the ER (but still bad enough to think I was dying and want to go to the ER). They took me immediately. Usually you have to wait like 8 hours. The nurse asked if someone could have slipped something into my drink. I said they couldn`t have; I had never had a drink and let it out of my sight. She said my pupils were huge, I was sweating buckets and my heart rate was through the roof. She asked if I was sure nobody had slipped me anything. I told her about the Celexa and tetracycline. The doctor later saw me and said that sometimes you just swell up like that and I didn`t tell him the whole story but if I had I think he would have done something. They sent me home, but by then I was alright; as the doctor said, if I had had a reaction to the drugs I had already gotten rid of them myself and there was nothing they could do now. I stopped taking the tetracycline. My mother later talked to a pharmacist and told her about my experience, and the pharmacist said that her daughter had taken tetracycline too and it had burned a hole in her stomach.

i would say a good 90% of medications or drugs i am allergic to, i either become very angry, emotionless monster, mood swinging, hyper easily agitated, upset and crazy person no matter what. I now only go the herbal route if anything is botherng me and even if then the herbal route affects those ways also, so try to stay natural as much as i can, so far acai juice the only one that makes me feel good and more verbal!

I'm OK with most over the counter meds (tylenol, motrin, etc.) But I have bad reactions to anti-psychotics & anti-depressants (they make my symptoms worse + more). This question all meds or just a specific group (prescribed by a psychiatrist).

Damn, looks like there is something thats little understood. I posted this because I pretty much had an anti depressant forced at me by the doctor yesterday which I refused on the grounds I react so badly to things. I've been trying to get my premenstrual symptoms sorted out, but all the seem to offer me is a drug with side effects which are exactly the same as my huge list of PMS symptoms.

I still don't think your ordanary common or garden doctor should be able to dish s**t like that out to anyone. Only a psychiatrist should be able to, and in extreme curcumstances when all else has failed.

[quote="miserylovescompany"]I just wondered how many other aspies have weird or adverse reactions to medications, either prescribed or over the counter.

Amoxycillin made me run to the bathroom where it came out like water.. sorry, but it did. Terrible. Stupid doctor insisted that is all they prescribe now. Ampicillin a bit better, but still have reactions.

I GAINED weight on Prozac and it hasnt come off in 11 yrs.. explain that. You are suppposed to lose pounds on it. Did initially, then my once perfect weight ballooned.

I have bad reactions to several classes of meds. Opiod pain relievers (synthetic or natural) make me intensely dizzy and cause projectile vomiting. I simply cannot break another bone ever or have an operation, because there is nothing they can give me. I had a bad reaction to an anti-nausea medication once and to an antifungal. Also cannot take sulfa meds. Interestingly, it seems I got this from the non-autistic side of the family.

Medications are bad for me. They make me angrier, less motivated, and also kill my thinking. They also make me more "ret*d' in thinking and living, and even though I am highly intellignet, when i am on them, i can get confused for a mentally ret*d person, because they cause me to lose my academic abilities. I have also had medical problems with them. i had Diabetes from seroquel(which i no longer have, since being taken off), I have had liver and Kidney problems from effexor, lexapro, risperdal, trileptal, and remeron. I also have had hormone problems from risperdal and remeron. I have gotten more depressed from zoloft. Pretty much every and all medications that I have been on gave me horrible side effects. I had all side effects, with no "good" effects. they were just defective. now I am not able to digest pills and/or medications because of permanent complications from colon removal surgery, but it turned out I never needed them anyway. Also, it turns out I am also intolerant of them, causing health and mental issues.

This is definitely the case, for me. I once had such a severely toxic reaction to Effexor, that I nearly crashed my care while driving. I have had severe reactions to anti-depressants, mood stabilizers. Some antibiotics caused colitis, and opiate based pain killers caused intense itching, nausea and vomiting, as well as cluster headaches that lasted for a few days. I always warn doctors that I am very sensitive to drugs, but they never believe me.

If they think giving me drugs is a cheaper option than sending me to see a specialist, they're wrong. It always fails and they land up having to prescribe more stuff to counteract the bad reactions, and then more to counteract the bad reactions of that etc.

I will have a battle getting my condition recognised now I have 'refused treatment' on my record, but the bottom line is if I took it I could land up getting arrested or sectioned, which neither me or my boyfriend want or need.

Everything when it comes to getting a doctor to recognise my AS BUT not see it as the cause of everything, is a long drawn out battle. I don't know if I have the energy these days.
Maybe I'll have to reach crisis point with this PMS stuff, maybe I'll actualy have to be picked up by the police or some other sort of serious trouble, because people only seem to react to the extreme once your over a certain age.

I've only taken one "heavy" drug and that was a beta-blocker - it had little or no effect on my stress levels, no side effects noticed but as the source of the stress went away after a few days, I stopped taking them. It didn't stop the doctor writing it up as a success story for the meds though. All he was interested in was the fact that my stress levels went down a couple of days after starting on the tabs - he didn't seem to hear the bit about the environmental source of the stress being removed at the same time .

Most over-the-counter drugs don't seem to do anything to me either - paracetamol & aspirin don't touch my pain and don't seem to have any side-effects. The only pain killer that seems to work on me at all is ibuprofen, so I take those occasionally but wouldn't make a habit of it.

I'd think very carefully before taking any "mental health" drugs - few of them are particularly safe, and I think it's important to weigh up the risks of taking the meds against the risks of not taking them, i.e. if you're not feeling suicidal, homicidal, or definitely going up the wall, you might care to consider just saying no. Listen to the doc, but remember it's your body and it's your choice.

Some doctors have been known to use drugs as a cheap diagnostic tool - i.e. if you present with symptoms that don't neatly fit one of the health profession's pigeon holes, they might hazard a guess at what the problem might be, prescribe a drug for that problem, and see if it helps. If not, guess again and repeat the procedure, several times if need be. Considering the prevalence of serious side effects, this isn't a good method. Try to ask questions such as why they're recommending this or that, and if the answers don't seem adequate, that could be because the rationale is dodgy in the first place.

It's a great shame that so many patients suffer from confusion, because that naturally makes it hard for them to scrutinise the doc's recommendations. I think that a clear-thinking friend at such times.

I can take most drugs whether they're over the counter or prescribed. Ones I can never take are penicillin type antibiotics because of an allergy, and antidepressants.

I have only mild side effects to most medication. However, when given psychiatric medication, I tend to get one side effect immediately and strongly: Sedation. Even normal doses of Ritalin brought on a sort of zombie-like state. The problem seems to be that I am rather sensitive to these drugs, and do better on a very low dose... anywhere above that, the side effects are worse than the condition. I mean, it doesn't make too much difference if it's depression or your antidepressant keeping you in bed 21 hours a day, does it? On the other hand, the dose of Ritalin they give to hyperactive three year olds (kids about a fifth of my body mass) seems to work about as well as a good cup of coffee (which is why I just drink the coffee). Above that, the alertness stops and the zombieness kicks in. I have no idea why. You'd think a stimulant would cause anything but a "slowing down" of mental processes.

With most over the counter medicines I can take them without having any bad reactions. If anything, I need to take more than the recommended dose of something to get it to work at times. However I have had strange reactions to sleeping pills. I can't remember what it was called as it was a few years ago, but I took it to help me sleep and about an hour later I was wide awake, hallucinating and laughing at anything that I perceived to have moved.

I agree. out of the last 5 years, I've spent approx. 3 of them dealing with side effects that severely impacted my quality of life while my concerns were largely ignored by both the medical doctor and the shrink until my digestive system shut down and I spent a couple thousand dollars on tests to verify I didn't have cancer. 9 months later I'm still recovering and very leery of any kind of anti-depressant. I can take valium to sleep, but sometimes it doesn't work.

funny, when I can sleep, I'm not depressed. when I can't sleep, I fall to pieces. I told them stop treating me for depression and start treating me for sleep deprivation. now I'm trying a different medication and so far it seems to help me sleep but I can't wake up very well. maybe it takes a while to stabilize, but I'm terrified of the possibility of side-effects.

Nope, never had a bad reaction to meds.