Wiccan_Seeker said:

Have you had Haldol yet?

I must say I mustrust the atypicals. Some dont seem to work at all (risperidone), others work on dozens of different receptors, thats akin to drop a bomb on a street to target an individual (thanks IDF for that analogy )

My brain is overactive and I take 2-3mg Haldol to make life easier. This is a dose that already would prevent psychotic relapses in many schizophrenics. I take it 3 hours before going to bed, so that I sleep over most side effects and have a kickass sleeping aid that develops no tolerance.

If you're going to try a Typical talk to your doctor about THE Typical, Haldol.

It can be taken once or twice a day and a normal antipsychotic dose is in the order of 2-7mg.

The zombies you speak of are on much higher doses, if you're lucky and only need a normal dose, after some months, its not particularly impairing, especially when compared to psychosis itself.

You have some hardcore symptoms though Bundy, you might be one that needs a relatively higher dose.

As far as I'm concerned, if Haldol doesnt help you you probably wont have much benefit from Typicals, typicals block Dopamine D2 and thats something Haldol does rather well. Most psychotics who are on typicals, are on Haldol.

For most its an unpleasant drug but at least its extremely well researched for many decades now in millions of people, no nasty surprises novel drugs can bring.

I'm not particularly bothered by 3mg haldol the way I take it, but I'm used to the drug and you will probably need a bit more.

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I haven't been on any of the typical anti-psychotics. So I haven't been on Haldol yet.
Though my good friend ( someone I met on the shroomery, and we chill almost daily )
Is also Schizophrenic, and he always tells me "Whatever you do, don't go on Haldol, you'll lose your mind."

But usually I just ignore him, because he's crazy. Which yes, is a little biased considering my own situation.

But when I see my doctor I'm going to talk to him about Haldol. I want something I only have to take at night.

Right now I'm on Saphris. I take it at night and in the morning. And I literally wake up at 5am just to take the morning dose, so I can sleep.

When the prescribed it in the hospital they woke me at 8 and I took it, and passed out almost immediately. I'd be sitting in therapy sessions and fall asleep in the chair.

It's getting to be a nuisance, plus it doesn't work. I just told them it did, so I could get discharged from the hospital.

I'm just going to ask him what he thinks about Haldol from a psychiatric point of view.

I don't want to lose my sex drive, I don't want to gain weight.

It sucks though that I have to wait so long to see him.

But I'm a little weary. He never likes to put me on more than 1 drug at a time, because I'm wicked sensitive to drugs, and he just put me on Lamactal a few weeks ago, and I'll be at 100mg by the time I see him. Plus, he just put me back on Valium. I don't want him to be like "Well you're at 100mg of Lamactal now, lets how that goes, and we'll talk about other anti-psychotics next month"

I hate when he does that.

badchad said:

Clozapine (Clozaril) is considered the most effective anti-psychotic, despite it being a very old drug.  However, clozapine has the unique risk of agranulocytosis, so taking it may be burdensome (e.g. it requires routine blood tests).  Because of this risk, clozapine is often considered a second-line treatment.

Perhaps the largest study done on antipsychotics was the CATIE study (which was completed about 6 years ago).  In this study, the surprising result was that there really wasn't much difference between "older" antipsychotics and the newer ones (across the board). 

Clozapine was the most effective, olanzapine came in a close second.

There were minor (perhaps clinically insignificant) differences in side effect profiles.  This is why patients tend to play "ring-around-the-pharmacy" and continue to switch.  They're a little bit differen, but not much, so you really just have to try and see what happens.

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