Posted by med_empowered on November 18, 2006, at 18:07:26
In reply to Re: Having trouble going off Geodon » waterfall, posted by Phillipa on November 18, 2006, at 11:22:38
officially, most shrinks say there isn't any sort of withdrawal syndrome from neuroleptics--if you're having problems, the reasoning goes, its a return of previously medicated symptoms, and you should probably re-start some sort of psychotropic treatment. However, some shrinks do recognize a distinct withdrawal syndrome--data going back to the 60s with Thorazine suggests one.
Tapering off neuroleptics is hard. I did my abilify cold turkey, and that was a very bad call. Could you get an RX for a benzo? A short-term benzo would help calm things down a bit while the taper is ongoing. Another approach might be a more gradual taper of the medication---instead of 80 to 60, maybe 80 to 70 (try opening the capsules to make that work). Another option would be trying to do some dose @ 80, others @ 60, and then working down to more days @ 60, and possibly down further until you're at 0 or wherever you'd like to end up.
Peter Breggin writes books about ill effects of psychiatric drugs. Some of his claims seem excessive, but he is one of the few psychiatrists I know of who gives practical advice to patients who want to taper off various meds (benzos, neuroleptics, antidepressants, etc.) You may want to swing by a library, book store, or amazon.com and check out some of his stuff.
Also, try googling him--I think he has a website that might have some general advice on tapers/dose reduction.
Good luck!
poster:med_empowered
thread:704975
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/wdrawl/20061010/msgs/705047.html