Major disturbed sleep on Seroquel XR?

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I've been noticing lately very disturbed sleep, including a need to sleep a lot. If I don't take my Seroquel XR one day, I don't have to sleep nearly as much. I am on 400 mg/day of Seroquel XR.

My sleep disturbances seem to be those of people who are extremely sleep deprived. If I nap for only an hour, I will have this long vivid dream, with a lot of the themes based on my current life. At times I will seem to switch between wakefulness and sleep in which I have vivid dreams. While awake, I will often try to force myself to move and get up, but I can't move, and when I finally do move, I would have moved only inside dreamland. My understanding is that these are the kinds of symptoms you get when you have been sleep-deprived for a long time.

I think, though, that this is the Seroquel XR, because when I tried going without one night, and I didn't have to sleep as much and I didn't have these sleep disturbances.

Has anyone else dealt with this while on Seroquel XR or another antipsychotic?

Seroquel is very sedating, so it's to be expected that you will have more hours spent asleep then you would without it. If you are finding it is causing you to sleep too much during the day, and you aren't taking this for psychosis of any kind, then try Seroquel instead of Seroquel XR. Seroquel XR is going to last a lot longer and well into the next day which is completely unnecessary for a sleeping medication.

I've been on well over two dozen types of sedating meds used for sleep and I've had vivid dreams that you are describing before. If they aren't nightmares or if they aren't bothering you then theres no need to really do anything about them.

I had a massive issue with sleep when on Seroquel/ Quetiapine. I've tried it twice and both times it really messed with my sleep pattern and made me wake up regularly as well as feeling really tired and spaced out all day and needing to nap. I also had very vivid complicated dreams and worsened sleep paralysis (where I wake up but I can't move and can see things in the room around me) and this was 10x worse on the Quetiapine. So I had to stop taking it both times after less than a week. I'd be interested to know if the sleep problems got less if you stuck at it and kept taking it a bit longer.

I found Olanzapine caused much fewer problems in this respect, although it was still very sedating. Its interesting to hear someone else had these problems, as the doctors didn't seem to believe it could have caused so many issues although after the second time I knew it much have been caused by the Quetiapine.