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Hi folks! I'm going to share with you Frank's experience with the drug Abilify (Aripiprazole- 1/4 mg.) This is my friend's experience that I transcribed since he cannot post it by himself (due to his severe condition).
Feel free to reply and ask as many questions you might have, he and I will answer ASAP.
Take care!
Sele.
Side effects:
- I started experiencing some minor insomnia starting the first night, meaning laid awake in bed for an hour or so total throughout the night. At first I thought it was psychosomatic but weirdly it seems to be worse every other night for some reason. It makes me wake up earlier than normal, which isn't entirely a bad thing since I tend to sleep so damn much since my last crash
-I had a headache that was bad enough to warrant taking 400mg of ibuprofen this morning, but it went away within 30 mins of the pills kicking in so no big deal. I never get headaches and headaches are one of the most common side effects for abilify so I'm sure this is a true side-effect
-I had a bizarre waking dream. Hallucination that my wife was talking to me while I lay in bed this morning and I thought she had just snuck up on me because I didn't notice her getting into bed but she was talking to me. But when I tried responding she was silent and I said something like 'so now you're not talking to me?' and when I didn't get a reply I realized she wasn't there and it was an extremely vivid dream or something. But it wasn't scary or unpleasant - - - on the contrary it was sort of cool so not a bad thing but I could see how this sort of thing could go badly
Benefits:
-I believe I have slightly more energy despite getting less sleep. Or rather I have roughly the same amount with several fewer hours of sleep, maybe a tiny bit more energy though
-Today was the first day when I noticed that my sensitivity to external stimuli seems to be slightly reduced. This is probably the main effect I'm hoping for in this drug because I have what I believe to be a GABA/glutamate imbalance in my brain or some other such thing that's making it hard for me to interact with people, use my screen reader very much, uncover my eyes, etc, etc. This is the first day where I noticed this effect and I can't be sure it wasn't a fluke but I was able to talk on the phone for a total of about 5.5 hours today and woke up and listened to music for about 2 hours, fairly loudly, which is really really out of character for me. I mean it wasn't super loud but loud enough that it could be heard from the next room. There was a study which found that abilify increased GABA concentration in the prefrontal cortex if I remember correctly which supposedly accounts for it helping with brain fog and possibly sensitivity.
-I may have been in a slightly better mood today than usual but hard to say, that kind of thing is so subjective
As a reminder, I'm taking 1/4 mg at around 10am every day and it takes approximately 14 days for the drug to build up to peak plasma due to the extremely long half-lives of the drug and its primary metabolite. So I'll probably wait till at least daay 10 to increase, assuming I continue to be able to tolerate any side effects.
Feel free to reply and ask as many questions you might have, he and I will answer ASAP.
Take care!
Sele.
Side effects:
- I started experiencing some minor insomnia starting the first night, meaning laid awake in bed for an hour or so total throughout the night. At first I thought it was psychosomatic but weirdly it seems to be worse every other night for some reason. It makes me wake up earlier than normal, which isn't entirely a bad thing since I tend to sleep so damn much since my last crash
-I had a headache that was bad enough to warrant taking 400mg of ibuprofen this morning, but it went away within 30 mins of the pills kicking in so no big deal. I never get headaches and headaches are one of the most common side effects for abilify so I'm sure this is a true side-effect
-I had a bizarre waking dream. Hallucination that my wife was talking to me while I lay in bed this morning and I thought she had just snuck up on me because I didn't notice her getting into bed but she was talking to me. But when I tried responding she was silent and I said something like 'so now you're not talking to me?' and when I didn't get a reply I realized she wasn't there and it was an extremely vivid dream or something. But it wasn't scary or unpleasant - - - on the contrary it was sort of cool so not a bad thing but I could see how this sort of thing could go badly
Benefits:
-I believe I have slightly more energy despite getting less sleep. Or rather I have roughly the same amount with several fewer hours of sleep, maybe a tiny bit more energy though
-Today was the first day when I noticed that my sensitivity to external stimuli seems to be slightly reduced. This is probably the main effect I'm hoping for in this drug because I have what I believe to be a GABA/glutamate imbalance in my brain or some other such thing that's making it hard for me to interact with people, use my screen reader very much, uncover my eyes, etc, etc. This is the first day where I noticed this effect and I can't be sure it wasn't a fluke but I was able to talk on the phone for a total of about 5.5 hours today and woke up and listened to music for about 2 hours, fairly loudly, which is really really out of character for me. I mean it wasn't super loud but loud enough that it could be heard from the next room. There was a study which found that abilify increased GABA concentration in the prefrontal cortex if I remember correctly which supposedly accounts for it helping with brain fog and possibly sensitivity.
-I may have been in a slightly better mood today than usual but hard to say, that kind of thing is so subjective
As a reminder, I'm taking 1/4 mg at around 10am every day and it takes approximately 14 days for the drug to build up to peak plasma due to the extremely long half-lives of the drug and its primary metabolite. So I'll probably wait till at least daay 10 to increase, assuming I continue to be able to tolerate any side effects.
