Seroquel

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Hi there, My son 17 has been taking Seroquel at night to help him sleep and cope with violent nightmares. I would love to read any experiences anyone has had. He has been on 100mg for 2 weeks. Any insight would be helpful. He feels it helps but we are all aprehensive about long term use.

I know nothing about the drug, sorry.

I do know that a lot of nurses who work shift work take gravol at night to help them sleep, just that little push to get them to sleep. My sister had a sleep disorder from the time she was around 11. (I think she may also be very mildy on the ASD scale) At 17 she started self medicating with Marijuana to sleep and various sleeping pills. Eventually, at 25 years of age, I got her to "try" gravol. It changed her life, and over the course of 6 months, she weaned herself off daily pot use!

Hello, effleck66, welcome to WP and Parents discussion. My 10 yr old As son takes 200mg of seroquel and has been on the medication for a couple of years. He also takes 25mg each morning to take the edge off of his moo0d swings. One of the potential side effects is elevated cholesteral levels. We have a blood work up on him yearly to monitor this. He originally started on Zyprexa but his latest psychiatrist was concerned about its side effects. Seroquel has been in use in the States longer and has a lower risk factor with long term use. The sleep aid factor is only one usage for both medications, as I said they are also used as mood stablizers. Z suffered from violent Night Terrors, for several years and the meds have helped him get more productive sleep. There have been no ill side effects. His dosage has been increased from the original 100mgs but then he has grown and size and weight are considerations with all meds. Hope this helps.

I have taken it for sleep but found the effects the next day to be too much. I would have almost like a hangover , very sleepy, and some what uncoordinated the next day. Here is a good web site about lots of different meds http://www.crazymeds.org/

our son is currently taking Seroquel...or rather i should say, he is supposed to be taking it...he doesn't like it because he says he's sleepy all the time. it's so hard to tell whether it's the meds or whether it's the lack of protein in his diet ( he's a vegetarian....umm i mean a grainarian)

thank you all for your insight. I have asked my son about him feeling drowsy and I thinkk the dose is not strong enough for that but he does have a hard time getting out of bed. He is 180lbs, 6ft 1 so perhaps it is not a high enough dose to affect him in the daytime? My concern is that the "magic" (good sleep) will ware out and then what?

I was prescribed 25 mg to help me sleep and it would put me to sleep for 18 hours straight. I even cut the pills in half and they still had this sedating effect on me. It also made me really cranky, irritable and just not pleasant to be around. Needless to say I quit taking it rather quickly! Good luck with it.

Insomnia and nightmares are related to anxiety. Seems to me that you should be working on the issues that are causing the anxiety rather than just a fix of a symptom.

My son had horrible dreams when he would take it. Deep, drugged sleep..... We try to avoid it!

Seraquel has a reputation for f*****g people up. I would never take any of the garbage meds that Doctors are all too eager to prescribe.

Is it anything like Mogadon? I took Mogadon for a month and found it really helpful but was told I couldn't have it after that because it was "too addictive". From what I've read, there can also be issues with weight gain through taking some of these medications; plus daytime sleepiness (no good if you have to lift children, operate machinery, or drive a car).

I have to agree with the poster who made a point about anxiety being associated with insomnia and nightmares.

Have you tried melatonin? If you havent, i'll tell you what i know. It is the chemical naturally produced by our bodies that makes us sleep. Some people have problems with it, but, it is often too high a dose for the people it is given to.

No matter what you do, if there is not a clear cut routine to bedtime, no matter what the age, no sleep med will work after stopping it. My girl didnt sleep for a solid year, except for naps when she was young. I had to learn about it, or die. She has been sleeping through the night for years now, except on the occasional full moon....she still will be up late then.

My mom and older daughter have taken all kinds of meds, and sleep meds almost always make you sleepy the next day....but then, so do a lot of antidpressants....and they often take the mania and leave the depresssion....you just gotta watch those chemicals. I only buy melatonin with the least ingredients listed.

Good luck. I know it is hard to worry and try and fix things, but you'll get it done.

tyger

I was prescribed it. to take at bedtime to help me sleep, but it makes me too sleepy even when I wake up... I dunno if it makes me sleep well... I only took it 4 times. It makes me remember my dreams more. Once I took one because I was tired but too depressed to sleep, but had to get to bed early, then I realized I was thirsty and decided to go to the grocery store for some milk... the grocery store is 8 blocks away, and by the time I got down the first block, which was long, it was already starting to take effect. I remembvered the Light Rail Tansit and went into the nearest station. I was almost passing out in the subway station; this old lady with no hair who looked like she had recently recovered from cancer looked at me oddly. When the train was coming she told me, "It's coming," as if she thought I was too out of it to hear the announcement or the train coming myself. Anyway, the mixture of the Seroquel and the milk put me deeply out of it (though its first hour of sleepy effects had sort of worn off by the time I got back) and I woke up more depressed than ever... it sort of made me more depressed other times too because my depression is understimulation and I NEED to be looking for stimulation all the time, and if I'm physically unable to do it-- as in, having taken a pill that made my physically tired and thus sick if I didn't sleep-- I get, naturally, even more depressed... once or twice it actually helped with depression through... and a doctor did say that it is supposed to help with depression and that therefore I probably should be taking it. Sometimes it gives me nice dreams, other times bad ones.

I have been on seroquel for a couple of months now, in doses increasing from 50 mg to 200 mg daily, for severe anxiety. Until I started being perscribed 200 mg a day, I couldn't sleep through the night. I would wake up around 2 or 4 a.m. and usually not be able to fall asleep again, even tired from going through that for several days already. From that viewpoint, seroquel has help me a great deal. They have me taking it now at night, because I tended at first to be very sleepy if I took it during the day. I've found that the effects are smoothing out with time.