When I took Trilafon (perphenazine), I was put on 12 mg. Honestly? It was excellent! Amazingly excellent! Prior to that, I had been having a lot of mixed elevated mood issues, that were somewhat, but not fully, helped by Navane (thiothixene) 10 mg and the rest of my then cocktail (900 mg Lithium, 1,400 mg Tegretol XR, 100 mg Lamictal, 160 mg Geodon, 0.5 mg Klonopin). After only a few days on the Trilafon all that bad stuff disappeared, and I felt more grounded than I had for a long time. The Trilafon was added to replace the Navane, which we thought had given me a blotchy rash all over my torso. The only negative I experienced was that I gained 9 lbs on Trilafon within just a few weeks. It's hard to now know if Trilafon was the main culprit, but I thought it was, and that pissed me off. Navane, and the other meds I mentioned, were weight friendly. I was pretty trim at that time, and gaining 9 lbs made me panic because I had been quite overweight a year before, and lost 40 lbs when taken off of Depakote and Invega.

I ended up going to a dermatologist because of the rash. That doctor said that the rash was NOT related to any medication. I forget what the rash was called, but he gave me a prescription cream and it quickly disappeared. Because Navane was ruled out as the cause, I asked my psychiatrist to go back on it. My moods sort of suffered slightly because of that. But I lost the 9 lbs quickly. Eventually, I was weaned off Navane because it gave me a dystonia. That's when Seroquel XR was added to my mix. And the story went on.