i am back from my mania, a bad and unsafe trip. Possibly i am having a gentle landing but is it only a stop over, i.e. eventually shall i plunge into depression my extended trip. nobody knows.
i tried lithium, lamictal and with no success, it seems i am addicted to the antipsychotics or that is how i was brought up and fed upon.
i read in wikipedia that seroquel can be used as monotherapy, meaning good also for depression and approved by the FDA. Whether it's the usual release or the XR only i don't know. In egypt we have the usual one only.
my dose before the mania was 50mg to prevent me from getting manic along with 1mg risperidone (it helps too) and 2mg stelazine (a typical AP). I wanted to stop the last one for its side effects so like a baloon throwing sand i went up immediately and took 3 weeks to go down. While up i was on 200mg of seroquel but now i began to be lethargic. If i lessen my dose will it still work as monotherapy or only antimanic. I phoned my pdoc this morning whom he set a date to see me on saturday, he is busy taking another free trip sponsored by the pharm comp, so he can't miss it of course. I even phoned astra zeneca branch in egypt and pretended to be a pdoc who has a patient very difficult to treat and need to know more information about seroquel. They promised to send a person from their sales' office to meet with me in my clinic so i replied that the phone conversation is enough. i know how they promote well especially that while sitting in any pdoc clinic a bunch of different sales representatives come and go, the assistant even let them meet the doc before the patients since they offer a lot of goodies. the last conference was in sharm el-sheikh.
so which dose for me you think is good for depression. also WHY a small dose 50 makes me sometimes lethargic and needs reduction while the pdoc gave me 200 during my mania and it worked OK . Of course that was diuring the mania but i am slipping down so i don't need that much but i fear if i go back to 50 say it won't be of any use but only a sedative. What is the starting dose foir helping in depression. should it be the XR, or would a kind person you folks can assure me that he used the normal one and it helped him
thx