Medication Dosage Titration Issues? How to Address This?

[ILADVOCATE]

   I have always had this issue even when the medications I was taking were standard medications in common use. When I have a medication that has to be taken twice daily it is usually sedating so I take one dose at night to sleep it off. Then the second dose has to be taken some time mid morning and can be slept off as well. But with many of these medications (a standard one was Seroquel, which I took in the past) if I take it too late in the day I feel the effect too much (cognitive confusion, motor restlessness) and if I take it too early it doesn't work and I am manic during the day. But as the specific medications are sedating both doses have to be slept off so it is hard to fix the time. Anyone have this issue? And how do you deal with it?

[lindahand]

I have a friend that was given adderal (either that or ritalin) as a stimulant to balance out the tiredness. She also had some symptoms of ADHD.

[starbunny]

Yes, have experienced similar things. I am on seroquel and initially the dose was supposed to be split in two to last the day. However the daytime dose knocked me out too much and so now I take it all at night, which great for sleep but not ideal as seroquel has a short half life and I would then start to speed up towards the end of the following day.
Don't really know the answer except adapt sleeping patterns like suggested in previous post, unfortunately I don't have the choice to adapt my own pattern around meds coz of work/kids etc, now considering AP switch to abilify.
About cognitive confusion etc I can relate to paranoid cataclysm because I was recently told by colleagues that it was greatly interfering with my performance at work, which I had no idea. Although I am also aware of it at other times like when I realise I constantly forget things when people lose their temper with me.

[paranoid_cataclysm]

Sounds like a catch 22 situation to me.  I don't know how you're aware of things like the cognitive confusion and motor restlessness, I don't notice a lot of times unless someone points it out but we're all different and that's good I suppose that you can notice that stuff and address it if possible.

I just try to roll with it.  One time I took my Geodon when I was taking that and its sedation kicked in too late for some reason and I fell asleep for six hours at work.  Of course you can't do that at a normal job and I wasn't able to do that constantly even at that job but uh I don't know where I was going with this actually.  Huh.  I guess the moral of the story is you need to compensate and I guess do what you're doing that works best.  For me I just tried to sleep two hours after I took the Geodon which is when it normally kicked in.  Abilify doesn't sedate me anywhere near as much as Geodon did before it became activating but it still makes me tired enough to sleep 3/4ths of the day.  Not having a job I just try to sleep in a schedule that works best for me.