[OutlawedSpirit]

Right now I'm on 80mg of Geodon and 15mg of Abilify. Except for some depression, I've been doing really well on them. I start Lamictal next week to help combat the depression. My only problem is they make me so tired. I don't want to change my cocktail, because like I said, I'm doing well on it, I just don't know how to deal with how tired they make me. When I have a day off, a short nap usually will help, but when I'm at work that really isn't an option. Does anyone have any ideas?

[ginaaa22]

When do you take your meds? Lamictol doesnt make me tired and i take it in the am and pm. I take geodon at night and abilify with dinner

[OutlawedSpirit]

I take abilify in the morning, and I take half my geodon in the morning, and half at dinner. Abilify never seemed to make me tired, I took that a while before I started the geodon. I tried taking the full dose of geodon at night, but it doesn't last throughout the day for me if I don't take part of it in the morning. I've even tried taking it later in the morning, like when I go on my first break instead of as soon as I get up, but once it kicks in, I get tired.

Tough situation. I have to take geodon in the morning as well as night too, but I've changed my dose so I only take 20mg in the morning and the rest at night. It is enough to get my through the day. It has made a difference to how tired I get.

Your docs would know more than me, but it seems a bit excessive being on Ablilfy, geodon AND lamictal. They will all do a similar job when it comes to mood stabilisation. Is there any chance you could drop one of the antipsychotics once you are on a stable dose of lamictal? That could really make a difference to how tired you are.

Drowsiness is patient-specific, and you're probably best off talking to your psychiatrist. I have similar issues. It took my body several months to stop being drowsy after a dose of mood stabilizer. My psychiatrist titrates my doses up very slowly, and even then, each increase is followed by a period of increased drowsiness. Good luck.

Sometimes psychiatrists put patients on a range of mood stabilizers as a "layering" technique. The aim is to give you the cumulative impact that a high dose of one mood stabilizer would have, while trying to minimize side effects (assuming that smaller doses of different medications will have a smaller individual side effect, and thus a smaller cumulative side effect). Ask your doctor if this is what he is doing (re: Supanova's question about why you're on three medications that are supposed to have the same effect).

[OutlawedSpirit]

The reason I'm on Geodon and Abilify is because the Abilify wasn't doing enough on it's own for my psychotic symptoms. It definitely helped curb mania, but the Geodon was added for hallucinations and paranoia. My pdoc then wants to add Lamictal to help with the depression end of the spectrum. I have thought about asking if we could try bringing me off the Abilify once I get stabilized on the Lamictal. Over the summer I took myself off of it for a while, so it lost some of it's effectiveness anyway. I'm not sure if my pdoc will go for it, but I figure it won't hurt to ask.