Psychiatric medication symptoms and conditions

I've been on and off singulair for several years. I had a horrible bout of bronchitis that then triggered bronchial reactive disease and I now have allergic reactions to certain chemicals (some spray deodorants, etc.) Singulair worked so much better for me than advair, I was thrilled to be able to talk and breathe. As a teacher I would sometimes have to stop the lecture to get my breath again and drink some water if I inhaled the slightest amount of chalk dust or something.

After reading the comments on this website I am going to discontinue taking singulair. I used to be this skinny person and never, ever worried about my weight. At the age of 37 I had a rip-snortin' major depressive episode with insomnia that had me miss 3 days of sleep (this is on no medication of any kind) and panic attacks and suicidal thoughts and impulses that I'd never had before. Imipramine was my first prescribed med (in 1991) and worked like magic. It cheered me up, calmed me down and made me sleep. I went from 135 pounds to 155 pounds in just several months. I finally got switched to effexor and trazodone, but there's really not been much weight loss. I'd hover around 150-160, but then with singulair added in the last several years I am 170 lbs. I can't believe I am a fat person now and do not over eat. I can't go off my psychiatric medication because it runs in our family and if I taper off I am...uh...crazy. My insomnia is tenacious when I am without medication and then that makes depression and anxiety worse. I never want to have a panic attack again.

I just ran out of my singulair prescription about a week or two ago. I am breathing and speaking fairly normally and my husband and I now have to pay for our own health insurance which is exorbitant and I just didn't feel like renewing the prescription in order to save money. I was pondering my weight gain today and just decided to google singulair and weight gain and I just can't believe it.

I have also experienced hair loss, but my hair is so thick it still looks basically the same. My husband and I have noticed over the last several years that I lose lots of hair after I wash it and there is a mass of hair in the shower stall.

My memory may have been adversely affected by taking singulair. I thought it's just getting older. I am 55. It's been the last several years that I have started to have problems remembering things. I have always had to work with my husband in helping him remember things (it's been life long with him: he is an absent minded professor. He has a genius IQ, is an M.I.T. grad, is an excellent engineer and can't remember his mother's birthday, what plans we have for the week-end, no matter how major, etc. to save his life.) I feel like I am becoming more like my husband in being hopeless and helpless about remembering what's happening from one day to the next. It could very possibly be the singulair. There has been a marked difference in my memory over the last several years. It is embarrassing. I sub for the school district and once showed up on the wrong day at a school and another time didn't show up and they had to call me up and get me out of bed to go to work. I also teach piano and never used to forget who was coming when. Again, I don't know if I can blame this on singulair causing memory loss, but there would be times when someone would knock on the door and I'd be surprised to find a piano student standing there. I feel like I am getting Alzheimer's. My grandmother had it for 17 years. My mom has always been afraid of getting it but she is 80 and is just now starting to show signs of real forgetfulness. I explained to her what my lapses in memory are like and she is shocked to hear that they are similar to hers. My mind just will completely go blank. I will have this thought, get distracted, and just a moment later will struggle to remember the previous thought and there is just a void, peace, blankness, white screen in my mind. Maybe it is getting older, but maybe it's the singulair. Since I'm just recently off it I'm going to pay attention and see if my memory improves or if it is just old age.

Also, my joint problems have been nearly ruining my life the last several years. I don't know if this is exacerbated by my singulair use or not. Bursitis in the hips runs in my family like crazy. We re-sided and painted our house several years ago and my bursitis started to flare up and has been bad since then, but it's also about the time I started taking singulair. I had to quit a sales job this summer because my bursitis has become so bad. Sometimes I can hardly walk. It is nearly unbearable. I get cortisone injections every 6 months, but need it every 2 months. I wonder if my discontinuation of singulair will ease my joint pain? I'm going to track that as well.

For me: weight gain, hair loss, joint pain, some dizziness are possible side effects from singulair.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to this site. I am never taking singulair again.

I have a seizure disorder (Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy) that started in 2000. I was on Valporic Acid till 2005 at which time I gradually switched over to Lamotrigine (Lamictal). My reason for switching to Lamictal is because it is a lot safer for an unborn baby than Valporic Acid and I got married in 2005 so just wanted to be safe just in case. Valporic Acid controlled both my myoclonic jerks and my grand mal seizures. I was on 1500mg a day (6 x 250mg). With the Lamictal I started at 100mg/day and now am on 125mg/day (5 x 25mg). I take 3 in the morning and 2 in the evening, exactly 12 hours apart. If I take my doses longer than 12 hours apart, I start feeling the withdrawal. My body just starts feeling strange. At first I thought this way I felt meant I was going to start having myoclonus jerks or a seizure but I now realize that it is withdrawal I am feeling. I hate how my body, my life, is controlled by the Lamictal. I hate the withdrawal feeling I feel almost every evening, and it goes away once I take my evening dose. Other than that I don't really know of any side effects I have. I know I am on a really low dose compared to a lot of people. My neurologist and family doctor want me to go up on my dosage to control my myoclonus jerks better but I keep refusing because I HATE HATE HATE being on any psychiatric medication. I have been on antidepressants in the past (Paxil, Effexor, Remeron, Cipralex at different times over 4 years) and I have been through withdrawal from them. I am so glad to be free from those drugs but I tell you the withdrawal is HELL. But if it wasn't for my seizure disorder, I would GLADLY go through hell again to be off of Lamictal. Recently I tried lowering my Lamictal dosage in hopes I could be on a lower dose. I cut one of my 5 pills in half which took me from 125mg to 112.5 mg. The first 7 weeks were fine - some minor hardly noticeable side effects. But then the withdrawal hit hard - panic attacks and extreme nausea being the worst, but also very weak/no strength, anxiety, trembling, etc. After 4 days of that I went back up to 125mg and after about 3 weeks was back to normal. The only reason I did not stick it out was because my myoclonus jerks were increasing and I did not want to seizure. I have stuck out half a year of antidepressant withdrawal torture and I would've stuck out the Lamictal withdrawal if it wasn't for my seizure disorder. Great book that really helped me if you want to go off Lamictal is Your Drug May Be Your Problem - How and Why to Stop Taking Psychiatric Medications by Peter R. Breggin MD and David Cohen MD. This book really helped me during my antidepressant withdrawal. Dr. Breggin also has a website which is ****** I do have some mild problems with anxiety and I have become a little OCD but I think that is left over from my years of antidepressant use as they both seem to gradually get better over time (I have been free from the death grip of antidepressants for 2 years now). If you decide to withdraw from Lamictal please do it SAFELY. Have strong support. Do it very gradually. Know the risks. I for one may have to be on this for life which is discouraging. After I am done having kids (I'm a 26 year old female, been married for 4 years, hoping to start a family soon) maybe I will switch back over to Valproic Acid.....it would control my jerks better but who knows if it would bring on a whole 'nother set of problems, right?

It is hard to tell what side effects come from which med but after reading other peoples experiences I think that its easier to put my finger on. I have been taking Lamictal and Lexapro since last spring/summer. I started to feel a lot better as soon as I started the Lamictal. I have a history of being severely depressed all the time. It has been a long road in search of the correct combo of meds. We added Lexapro and I got even better. I was on Wellbutrin and Topamax before this and it was too much drugs in my system causing loads of anxiety. I heard Topamax makes you Dopey so I was happy to get off that. I don't notice Lamictal doing the same thing. I think clearly now, but I do have trouble crying - which is fine with me. I am so sick of fucking crying everyday. Aren't you??? The whole point of treatment is to increase the quality of life and These drugs have definitely helped me to be happy which is all I care about. However, I do still wonder what I would feel like without them. It is tempting to stop once you feel this good. Why cant i just be able to feel this good naturally. WHY WHY WHY .

I've never written on a blog in my life, and now that I've just read this, my stomach is doing flip flops and my blood is runnung cold. I have an 11 year old son and a 9 year old daughter. They have both been on singulair for quite a few years. My son has been on ADHD meds now since about a year and a half after starting Singulair because we tried to avoid them. Every few weeks he tells me he has this empty feeling inside him that makes him really sad and he doesn't know what it is. It just feels empty. I'll usually read with him or play a game or walk our dog with him to help him feel better.
As for my daughter, she exhibits all of the symptoms I have read about. She talks about life being terrible( trust me, she has it pretty good), she has been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, OCD and Tourette Syndrome. Every psychiatric medication we have tried has made her worse. She was always a confident, outgoing little girl, and then she just changed. She's had stomach aches, which the docs always thought were in her head. She gets headaches. She is extremely sensitive, won't let me even brush her hair or touch her. She has extreme mood swings and gets upset over the most miniscule things, then writes about them, even saying she realizes her anger was too much for what the situation was! I will stop Singulair immediately and see what happens. What a miracle it would be if all of their symptoms disappeared.

I live in Israel, and here in this country not only do the police do their duty incorrectly, but so do psychiatric officials.
I was in a bad state emotional, and that did not result in any obscene or out-of-the-order matter, but me having chosen to move on with my life was a bad idea since moving on meant letting go and kicking out of my life a she-devil that posed as a girlfriend.
she had connections and accused me wrongfully of stuff i didn't do, and since she had friends in the police force, I ended up being admitted to a psychiatric hospital, there I was forced to take 10 mg of ZYPREXA, every day, for a little more than a month and a half, after a couple of weeks i developed a rash on my head, and vibrations with palpitations.
when i stopped taking ZYPREXA, the rash continued, the vibrations when i go to sleep with the palpitations continue but are even worse,
I cant sleep, and when i do fall asleep I wake up every hour, if lucky i sometimes manage to sleep for 2 hours and then only wake up, and i keep waking up until i give up on sleeping, i get headaches, nausea, dizziness, i eat, and after 30 minutes to 1 hour i go the the toilet and diarrhea..
my left eye sees blurry, i hear much less in my left ear, and not to mention that i have no tinnitus, - all day long i hear an electric pulse in my ears, i am disconnected from emotions, cant concentrate, my memory is impaired, i cant seem to make myself do anything, i cant even figure out what i am feeling, my teethes health has gone bad, get mood swings which are not extreme at all, resulting in me not knowing what it is I'm going through, i think this Zyprexa ordeal as resulted in multiple sclerosis which hasn't been diagnosed yet, and i don't know what more else there is, since i am quite handicapped mentally emotional and physically i can do stuff, but for some reason i don't do anything.
bad dreams (when i do manage to get several minutes of sleep), and i feel stoned all the time. and this is not all, but seriously, here in Israel or overseas, who really gives a damn? and who can help these things go away??..Ive been told to wait (I've been waiting a little more that 3 months) for all this to go away, and nothing as gone away, instead more things slowly gather.
too bad there is no death sentence here in Israel, if there was I might try to get it, to end this suffering, though, what can i say, even dying is not something I can manage to get myself to do, I cant seem to actually decide to do anything, I just think of it, and in the meanwhile, my whole life is passing in front of my eyes, making me realize, this might be the ending of my life as I know it, and all i have to do about it is just sit and wait, either for things to change (cause i cant change them), or to die.

I have been on 40 mg Geodon for over 6 months, and I stay like I am in the clouds and my legs and hands will shake ,bad anxiety,I don't want to go out and do anything.I want to get off this drug against my docs orders , does anyone have any information on withdrawals from the Geodon?and how do you tapper yourself off it . email me *** thank you Melissa

Within 5 days of beginning course of Geodon, 40mg daily, doc doubled my dosage to 80mg, began to have problems. Intensely manic, easily frightened, insomnia, terrifying dreams. I decided to get out of hospital ASAP and decide if to quit taking Geodon.
On day six already my face was twitching, was irritable and manic, pacing, increasingly manic throughout day, decided to skip evening dose, keep total dosage same as before, 40mg. Began tripping around midnight and it was all downhill from there. Sleepless all night, by morning I had convulsions, increased heart rate, fear and anxiety, psychosis, uncontrollable crying. Had another seizure 12 hours later. Slept a little with help of Valium. Next day developed Parkinson's like symptoms, had my father not been there to help me, Lord knows what would have happened to me. Still awake in day 3 of withdrawal. Hoping the worst is over.