So I’ve been on seroquel for a couple of weeks now and this is what I’ve noticed.

The main thing I was worried about was increased appetite and weight gain but to counteract that we increased my Topamax to 50mg twice a day.  That seems to have worked to a point.  Most times of the day I don’t feel increased hunger but at meal times I find I’m feeling less satisfied after I eat.  I just use some CBT and tell myself that I won’t feel satisfied no matter how much I eat and the urge passes after a while.  So far I haven’t gained any weight, even though it’s been only two weeks.

I’ve taken seroquel before and it knocked me for six every time.  I would be out straight away and wake up groggy fourteen hours later and this was just on 25mg.  I’m taking 50 now, and it takes me a little while to get to sleep and I tend to sleep for eleven hours without much hangover effect.

Normally I take my regular tablets at about six thirty like I was before and take the seroquel at eight thirty and get into bed straight after.  The first few days on it I was on my phone in bed then I had a night where I didn’t sleep at all despite taking it so I had to come to terms with the fact that I had some shitty sleep hygiene so now I just get into bed and turn the lights off without doing anything to stimulate myself

It seems that 50mg is a good dose of seroquel for me, and I seem to be getting rest on it for now.  I only hope this lasts.

I’ve just been to see my doctor and we’ve made some major changes because I’ve stopped sleeping.  After all the trouble we went through to get me onto zeldox I hoped that regime would have lasted longer but nope.

The whole thing started last Monday when I had a follow up appointment with my inpatient psychiatrist at the hospital but I showed up having not slept at all the night before.  I explained to her that I took my PRN temazepam and it didn’t work so she got me some seroquel from the hospital pharmacy and told me to take that.  I did, and it worked after a couple of hours.

I showed up at my psychiatrist’s office and she said she had received a letter from the hospital doctor detailing my sleeping troubles.  I told her what had been happening – my sleeping had been varied, but generally I’ve been getting to bed late, or waking up at midnight and not being able to get back to sleep.  I feel that my mood is suffering because of it.

She told me what I had been dreading, that we had to start regular seroquel again.  I had really been wanting to avoid this because I gained so much weight on it last time I was taking it, plus previously I;ve been super sensitive to it and it has knocked me out for about sixteen hours at a time.

She said that weight gain on seroquel was not a guarantee; just because I might get an increased appetite doesn’t mean I have to give into it.  But to try and assist me she raised my topamax from 50mg a day to 100mg because of its appetite suppressant properties.

She also reduced my zeldox from 160mg to 80mg and ceased my valdoxan.  The only reason I was on so much zeldox was to sleep and it wasn’t working but I still need some for my anxiety.  Valdoxan, the melatonin tablet was originally prescribed when I wasn’t on any antipsychotic but starting on lamotrigine caused me to stop sleeping.  That clearly isn’t doing its job, and may be contributing to some bipolar symptoms so it had to go.  And considering it isn’t on the PBS and was costing me sixty-five dollars every month, I can’t say I’m sad to see it go.

She told me to come back in two weeks instead of my usual six to update her on how the sleep situation is going.  If I’m still not sleeping on 50mg of seroquel, she said we will have to consider hospital again.

I will post again in a few days to update on how I’m going on seroquel.

Mac