AP Weight Gain

Good day everyone:

I hope you guys are doing fine. Many of you may not know me as I usually stick to the depression forum, but there are psychotic features to my depression so I sometimes browse the Schizophrenia and Psychosis forum when I need help with that aspect. Anyways I was curious about your experiences with anti-psychotic weight gain. I've been on Zyprexa for about a year and it has worked wonders for me in helping me. One big side effect though has been weight gain. I went from 150 to 200 pounds in one year. I have a big build and am tall so 200 is normal weight and people tell me I look way better than I did when I had no appetite at all and was starving myself. I was just curious in your experiences like whether does the weight gain stop after so long or does it continue on for as long as you take the meds. I figured you guys may be able to give more insight since most of you have experience with anti-psychotic meications. Thank you for your responses.

Hello. I was on zyprexa for 2 years, and gained 40 lbs. The weight gain never stopped for me, unless I really watched what I was eating. I was always hungry, so dieting was hard. I gained weight regardless of what dose I was on (3 mg-11mg).

Hope this helps.

Zyprexa is one of the worst...statistically at least....everyone responds differently. My pdoc told me AP induced weight gain typically stops after about year....I never tried zyprexa so I don't have personal experience for that one but I found it impossible to lose the weight I gained on abilify at any point...but it did remain stable at a year out...

Thanks for the responses guys, I appreciate them. I am moving islands this week and am moving to the big city so I hope to find a gym to get membership in so maybe that will help keep my weight down. At any rate I would prefer the weight gain to the hell my life was before I started treatment.

@Secretum: I know what you mean, this Zyprexa makes a person really hungry, the food in my house disappears really quickly, especially sweets.

@Sometimes psychotic: You know I was prescribed Abilify first, but it was so expensive where I live, even with insurance, that I couldn't afford it. I then tried Seroquel, but that made me so sedated I would sleep all day. I would get tired just laying down all day. Zyprexa has seemed to be the right AP for me so far. It is somewhat sedating if I do alot of activity in the day, it does make me tired, and it causes me to eat like crazy, but the side effects are managable to me, atleast its alot better than not being on it all together.

I gained 72 pounds on Geodon and now I'm on Abilify. My total weight gained on both is now 89 pounds. Something has to stop. I'm terrified. But I can't go off the AP, or I'll hallucinate again. Psychotic depression, like you, though I think it's more like schizoaffective depressive type.

Anyway, yeah, 89 pounds while I am actively trying to lose weight. I am spine injured so I can't work out, but I watch what I eat constantly. *sigh*

i gained 80 pounds on seroquel but i lost it thankfully. now on haldol and gained 35 pounds. actively trying to lose the 35 pounds too.

I gained a lot of weight on Zyprexa. I'm currently on Seroquel and have gained 14 pounds

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I've been on Abilify, then Invega, and now Zyprexa in the last year, and all together I've gone from 155 to 205 pounds. Not liking it at all. Tried to go off my Zyprexa last week but only got 4 days into it before I was seriously scaring myself.

I put on heaps of weight with zyprexa. I was on clozapine after that and it was a lot worse. I'm really struggling to lose the weight I put on.

I started cutting my 20 mg Abilify in half last Thursday and I am already down 2.5 pounds. I just hope to God that I don't go psychotic again. I can't keep gaining weight though, I am morbidly obese now!

Hi Shmooey:

Are you working with your doctor on that?

My son's pdoc worked with him on reducing his dose. He was taking 35 mg of olanzapine when he left the hospital a few years ago. The pdoc immediately started reducing the dose by 5 mg per month. Everything went fairly well until the drop from 15 mg to 10 mg. He had to go back up briefly then and come down more slowly.

He's currently taking .625 mg (1/4 of a 2.5 mg pill). He's planning on staying at that dose.

Suddenly cutting your dose in half seems like too drastic of a reduction to me.

Shmoeey, you may find an antipsychotic out there that controls your symptoms without causing weight gain. I was lucky enough to not gain on Abilify, Geodon, or Latuda, but they didn't control my mood symptoms very well. Talk to your pdoc about other options.

do you guys just cut the pill with a pill slicer? i had one doc put me on that much of a pill once but i didnt understand the point in cutting it into fourths or whatever.

your son seems to take such a low dose. does it work effectively for him? fully?

Yes, he uses a pill cutter. The 2.5 mg pill is the smallest one. The pdoc was going to have him lower it by a 1/4 pill per month, but that seemed too fast to me, so we lowered it by 1/8 pill per month. So he was having to make some really tiny pieces during some months.

He was going to go off altogether, but as the dose has been reduced he found he was having a harder time getting to sleep. So, he decided to keep that last little bit to help with sleep.

Does it work effectively and fully? That's so hard to answer. At any dose he has what might be considered to be 'symptoms,' although I'm not sure they're psychotic symptoms. Mainly what I see are OCD-type symptoms and I guess what gets called negative symptoms and some anxiety. Occasionally he'll call and ask if something 'means something.' Sorry, can't think of an example right now - but, you know, reading significance into an event which really isn't significant.

Personally I agree with Sometimes about CBT. I do think we can rewire our brains by working on changing our thoughts and behaviors. In order to do that you have to have some 'symptoms' to work with. If you're drugged into oblivion, you aren't going to be challenged. On the other hand, if your mind is too wild you'll have a hard using CBT type techniques.

When I say CBT, btw, it's just kind of my own home-grown version. I've tried to get him to use books and take a formal approach, but he strongly objects. He just wants to call me or text me and talk stuff over, and I make suggestions or he has insights, and we proceed in a bumpy way, inching our way along.

What I see in him is a lot less rage. Also he doesn't seem as paranoid. He's not delusional. Hallucinations have never been a major thing for him.

He tells me that it's gotten easier for him over time. He used to obsess constantly. He'd get hooked on a memory, for example, and go over it and over it obsessively. I'm not sure why. Something about 'figuring it out.'

So, is it effective or fully effective? I think it we relied only on the medication and he was getting isolated, no, it wouldn't be effective. He can still slip into a weird train of thought which could lead nowhere good. He just calls me when it happens. And he'll start by saying, "I just want to catch this before it gets out of hand." So, he recognizes the kinds of thoughts which can lead down a bad path. And that's good.

He does need me to talk things through with. I don't know if a therapist could fulfill that same function. A sympathetic therapist who wouldn't label his experiences and thoughts as 'symptoms' of 'mental illness' might be useful. I think understanding someone's experiences as part of the human condition is helpful. The problem that even the most empathetic therapist has IMO is that s/he is not avail when needed. My son calls/texts when he needs to talk. And that's at least once a day, often several times a day. We don't meet once a week for an hour.

i cant even meet my own therapist for an hour. she has cut me down to 30 min and what she calls case management instead of therapy.so im NOT EVEN gettin therapy anymore which sucks because i really need someone to talk to.

Yeah, I know. It's not therapy, but it's not case management either.

its not case management? whats case management then? what am i really getting then? i dont understand what this clinic is trying to do to me?

My son's case managers never met with him in an office for just talk. And it certainly wasn't limited to 30 minutes once a week. They were in the community with him, helping him hook up with services and find housing and jobs and whatnot.

Anyway I'm afraid we've hijacked this thread. Maybe this conversation needs to be continued elsewhere.

sorry.
to be continued on roll call...

No, I am not working with my doctor. I go to a teaching hospital for my pdoc and my pdoc just graduated and went to private practice an hour away. I have an appointment in late August with a new guy who's a third year resident (under supervision). I'm not going to gain another ten pounds between now and then.

I guess I could have gone to 15 mg first using my pill cutter, but I didn't think of that. I started on 10 mg so that's what I went down to.

I know I could handle this better, but I am despondent about my weight. I got up to 317 and that is dangerous territory for a lot of physical problems as well.

So far so good on not having side effects. I had some dizziness but it's starting to subside.

I don't recommend doing this, I would have usually worked with my pdoc but he's gone.

dont' screw around with your pills by yourself. one week later and I have been hallucinating for 3 days and counting. had to make an emergency appt with the new pdoc. too many words in my head and in the world, just too many words. hearing words and other peoples' words getting sucked in my head when I don't want them to....

anwyay, just don't do it. I'm not going to keep gaining weight, but I am going to find a differnet medicine. i'm sorry and you can say you told me so.

You won't find any "I told you so"s here. You took a risk, and it didn't work out. That's okay. Try something else, get the hallucinations under control, and still lose the weight. You can do it. And you're not alone. I tried going off my zyprexa without my pdoc's knowledge, and it didn't work for me either. And this is the second time in 3 months that I tried to go off it! It really sucks that we have to take these meds with all their side efffects.

yes! I agree. I go tomorrow at 3, can't wait. our bookshelves are in my bedroom and all the words bleeding out of the books are driving me crazy, and the words in the dvds....and this is still on 10 mg of abilify which is still a schizophrenia dose. my last pdoc said major depression with psychotic features, when we got the depression under control the psychosis would ease. wrong! ding ding ding!!!

Frustrating. Maybe abilify is not the drug for you. I was on 15 mg, still had hallucinations, still had bipolar mood cycles. So just because 10 mg is enough for one person with psychosis doesn't mean that that drug or dosage is right for you.