Ten Days Into the Study

I began a research trial study thing on using a traditionally utilized antipsychotic medication, Cariprazine.  I have clinical depression and anxiety.  This medication is being researched to see if it has any positive effects on depression and anxiety.  I am here to say that, in ten days, it sure does!  BUT for people like me (no specific type, just those similar in some ways I am not aware of), there are shitty and painful side effects.

adverse effects for antipsychotics

At first, I wasn't aware I was suffering the side effects.  I thought I was just having effects related to insomnia.  I felt achy and tingly and had trouble sleeping.  Nothing new for a girl with depression and anxiety.  But it got worse.  I started feeling as though I was in withdrawal from my effexor, only not quite.  With withdrawal, I feel as though I have static electricity in every nerve, as I can literally feel the synapse receptors sucking up the serotonin and norepinephrine.  I get nauseated and dizzy and exhausted.  I sleep easily, though.

am i NOT already taking enough meds?!?!

With this medication, I feel pain....not static.  I feel lit up, not buzzing.  I am edgy yet complacent.  I want to move but I run out of breath within a few steps.  I began to clench my teeth hard when I wasn't paying attention, and my back became so tight that I couldn't walk more than ten feet without my lower back giving out and excruciating pain.  I began to shake with any sort of effort of movement.  Holding my phone left me wondering if my phone would suffer Shaken Baby Syndrome.  I still didn't think it was the medication, but it was.  I couldn't sleep more than a couple of hours for an entire week. I couldn't focus to save my life.  And typing, texting, and moving at all made me very nervous due to the acute increase in pain that did not abate after stopping the movement.  And finally I spoke to my research lady, and she said one other participant had the same adverse effects of the medication.  So I was to come in and she would write me a Rx for a medication to combat the pain.

She did offer for me to decrease my intake from 3mg to 1.5mg, but I figured that with the decrease in dosage, I would simply get a decrease in the pain and it wouldn't disappear entirely.  So i opted for the script.

Tomorrow, I pick up the script and start taking it.  Lets see how it goes, shall we?  I am excited.

For the record - I have NOT experienced crippling depression since taking the Cariprazine.  I had a near anxiety attack on one day, but that was due to being awake for 30 hours straight, I am sure.  I was also in a public, crowded place.

I have felt more 'with-it' on this medication.  No days spent in my bed-fort, wallowing in dreams of work.  No cloud over my head.  I shower every day.  I get up and outside.  And it isn't just because I think I should.  It is because I WANT TO.  If you haven't had real depression....clinical, chronic depression....you don't know how AMAZEBALLS that is. 

Here's hoping.