Seroquel has pretty much kept me alive for the last 8 years. I was very afraid to go on it because I'd been on other APs with really bad results (extrapydramidal syndrome, blood pressure problems that landed me in the er twice, double vision, akathesia) and the psychiatric facility where I worked used it a lot and the patients on it were snowed. It turned out that the psychiatrist there was using it to purposefully snow people so that fear was unnecessary although I had to try it to learn that. I've never found it to be as heavily sedating as people complain; it used to help me sleep (probably still would if this episode would ever end) but I took it plus high dose depakote and other sedatives together and was still working and was on it with klonopin and sometimes valium and slept 5 solid hours every night for the time I was stable about 5 years ago and continued sleeping like that for quite a while past the stability.

I did go up on the dose very slowly but that was because of my history with the other APs that I'd tried.

I've had some weight gain on it, nothing enormous compared to what other meds have done. Until I was on a high dose (1200 mg) it didn't seem to make me gain that much on its' own and I'm hoping that if I can get below that dose using my 2nd new AP that I'll be able to get some weight off. I've lost some with the new AP already so I'm hoping that continues.

It's been a good drug. I've done better on XR than regular; literally from the 3rd day on XR I felt better. I begged to go on XR when it was coming out because it was supposed to help people who were on higher doses and were overly sedated. I don't know what it did for that b/c of too many other drugs in the equation but something clicked and it has worked better for me.

SInce I've been on it I've also tried Zyprexa, Latuda and now loxapine and the first two didn't help much (Latuda wasn't given a very fair chance) and loxapine is too new to be sure about although it seems to be helping some but the dosing is extremely low still.