DOSE:

200 mg

oral

Pharms - Quetiapine

(pill / tablet)

BODY WEIGHT:

63 lb

I have a fair amount of experience with antipsychotics due to a psychiatrist prescribing them to me for I'm not sure exactly what. Quetiapine is the antipsychotic I have the most experience with. My first time I just wanted to know what it would do. One 25mg tablet just made me sleepy, two would knock me out. I found that quite interesting and one night decided to take 75mg. I quickly became extremely sleepy, so I turned of the light and went to bed. My heart was racing, my room started to feel slightly unfamiliar and it was really warm since it was summer, I couldn't sleep because of the heat.

I got back up, turned on the light and at that point the unfamiliarity feeling was really bad. I felt like this wasn't my home at all and I was in a strangers house, it was really scary. I decided to go to the living room in hopes that would feel familiar, but no, not at all. On top of that my heart was racing and burning. I lay down in the couch scared, but I probably fell asleep. Or half asleep because I hallucinated my dad talking to me standing in a black void, but I couldn't say anything. Later I had super vivid nightmares. One I remember was two elephants fighting with swords and cutting off each others legs, until one was lying in the floor with only four bleeding stumbs left.

Later, a psychiatrist prescribed quetiapine after trying three other antipsychotics, which made me completely lethargic for days. I took the 25mg tablets for sleep but had to increase my dose. The first time I increased from 75 to 100 mg I had another horrifying experience. I just swallowed the four pills and went to sleep, but soon after that I found myself in my bedroom floor vomiting all over the room. A moment later, I woke in the middle of the night in shock, this dream was terrifyingly real. I was scared to go to sleep again.

Back at my psychiatrist I told him I take four pills every night, so he prescribed me 150mg quetiapine tablets, and 50mg in the morning. I just felt really sick, sleepy and hungry every time I took the 150mg pill. In fact the hunger was so bad I got up again despite the extreme lethargy and went into the kitchen like a zombie to eat. I noticed I also had hallucinations, things at the corners of my vision would change into something else for a second, like a plate would turn into my cat for a moment.

Another quite frightening thing is the absolutely seamless transition from awake to dreaming in this drug. I often would lie in my bed waiting for sleep and this would happen. One time I was lying in my bed and it was dark and a few moments later I sat at my desk with the lights on, but instead of my PC there was a towel with different tools like a hammer on it and I would pick it up and a voice would shout "a hammer". Nothing seemed odd to me until I woke up in shock. I could swear this was real.

At my next visit with the psychiatrist I just talked with him and he just increased my dose to 200mg for whatever reason. 150mg was bad, but 200 made me feel really sick. My heart would race so fast, when I would walk up stairs my heartrate would easily go over 120. It actually made me scared, and despite feeling extremely lethargic, I felt too sick and horrible to sleep. I actually had to take xanax to sleep because the side effects scared me.

At this point I decided to quit, and since my psychiatrist told me that unlike the benzos, antipsychotics don't have withdrawal effects, that should be no problem. Wrong. When I stopped I noticed I just couldn't sleep, no matter how tired I was. In my desperation I used xanax and alcohol to induce sleep, only to wake up less then two hours later. It took me a while to realize this was due to quitting quetiapine. I read that it had withdrawals, and reading other peoples experiences with that made me scared. I took it again and slept fine, so I just tapered off, which luckily was quite easy.

Exp Year: 2019	ExpID: 113916
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 21
Published: Dec 20, 2023	Views: 17
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Pharms - Quetiapine (273) : General (1), First Times (2), Retrospective / Summary (11), Difficult Experiences (5), Bad Trips (6), Health Problems (27), Medical Use (47), Hangover / Days After (46), Not Applicable (38)