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Abilify- Stanford Clinic Patients

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leokitten

Senior Member
Messages
1,590
Location
U.S.
Badpack said:
@leokitten whats the reason to stop at 0,5mg ? Did the positiv effects at 0,5mg outweigh the possible risk/reward of higher doses for you ?
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Not at all, the positive effects are really good enough for me and no side effects except sleep.

The main reason is I want to know first that it will work for me well beyond 4 months otherwise what’s the point of going to a much higher dose that I then have to come off of. I might go up to 1 mg max during this 4 months but definitely not over that.

If it stops working because of dosage then it’s just a game I don’t want to play anyway because eventually the higher dose will just stop working and it will be even harder to cycle off of.
 
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Strawberry

Strawberry

Senior Member
Messages
2,109
Location
Seattle, WA USA
BananaMango99 said:
Third day of 0.125mg Abilify and I think this is too energising for me, unfortunately. Feels very similar to Moclobemide, which I also stopped for being too energising.

To illustrate, I usually start getting sleepy around 10-11pm. Both drugs seem to block that process, and actually even give a bit of a kick at that time, adrenaline type kick. Both then wake me up during the night once I do sleep. And both have rebound fatigue as a result of the over-energising
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Banana, what time do you take abilify? Sorry if you have said that all ready...
 
R

ruben

Senior Member
Messages
295
Apologies if this too has been asked before, but if you live in UK can we just go to our GP and request to try Abilify.?
 
L

leokitten

Senior Member
Messages
1,590
Location
U.S.
Badpack said:
@leokitten sounds like a very reasonable undertake. Interested to see where it leads. If you would give Abilify a percentage of improvement, how would you rate it now ? To compare it for maybe later.
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Huge, maybe 50% or more. I can do way more than I’m doing but I just don’t. There’s no way this is placebo effect it would be totally impossible given the severity of my illness before and the fairly sudden and consistent improvement.

I tried another very exerting event the other day, I drove for an hour to visit my parents and visited with them outside (COVID) for a couple hours and drove back. No PEM no symptom exacerbation nothing, this drug is almost a miracle.

I still very certainly have ME, I will still get symptoms out of nowhere especially at night even though I did almost nothing the week before, so it isn’t disease modifying at the core of whatever my ME is, but it’s having a huge effect on whatever downstream dysregulation is driving a lot of my symptoms. I suspect a subset of pwME have very similar ME to me and experience the similar amazing effects from Abilify.
 
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Hoosierfans

Hoosierfans

Senior Member
Messages
400
@Badpack what dose did Martin go up to? Yes, I hope he recovers soon too. I know many of us were doing a major happy dance when we saw his impressive recovery...want nothing more than a full and complete recovery for everyone here! 🥰
 
Hoosierfans

Hoosierfans

Senior Member
Messages
400
Badpack said:
@Hoosierfans well following his instagram at least 4mg. Could be more when i see that he posted that he took >50mg Lorazepam
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Yikes, ok. Does Ativan (lorazepam) increase blood levels of Abilify?

Such a learning curve here....hopefully they figure out the mechanisms and what to do to avoid it pooping out. I just watched “Awakenings” the other day and it reminded me of this whole situation.

@Janet Dafoe would be very curious if Ron or anyone else at Stanford has any input / thoughts on why Abilify might cease working for some.
 
B

Badpack

Senior Member
Messages
382
@jaybee00

"Aripiprazole showed the lowest rate of the three drugs for EPS (excluding akathisia), dystonia, Parkinsonism, and abdominal pain."

This should make it the clear winner against the others. Akathisia is reversible. Other EPS + dystonia, Parkinsonism often not.

Considering that in this low dose protocol ,that is used for Cfs, the only mentioned side effect here is insomnia, then this could be of interest.

"the rate of insomnia for brexpiprazole was half that of aripiprazole, for example, which could guide therapy for a patient already deprived of sleep"

But all in all we know too little what abilify does. So changing things up is even more dangerous. Also no one knows the dose for Brexpiprazole and cariprazine.
 
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jaybee00

Senior Member
Messages
593
Brexpiprazole showed the lowest rate of the three drugs for akathisia, fatigue (tied with cariprazine), constipation, diarrhea, dyspepsia, nausea, dizziness, headache, and somnolence.

Difference for EPS not that big between Brex 6% and Abilify 4%
 
Hip

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,857
I am not sure why researchers call aripiprazole "the original dopamine stabilizer", as it does in the study mentioned just above. Aripiprazole was released in 2002, whereas the dopamine stabilizer amisulpride was released in the 1990s, albeit not in the US.
 
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