Also (from wikipedia) on Seroquel / Quetiapine: "Despite being widely used as a sleep aid due its sedating effect, the benefits of such use do not appear to generally outweigh the side effects."
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8812/afd4bc713c03435b68f2bb...
Personally I would only take antipsychotics when absolutley necessary. Nasty stuff.
This guy drove away his friends, crashed his car and had psychotic episodes. During a 13 year addiction to the zolpidem. That's way past the "there may be some side effects" phase.
Yes, it can be used as an anti-psychotic. However, in most of the cases I've heard, it's used as a sleep aid.
This was the case for me, too. I was on it for 10 years and ultimately went off because I grew out of my chronic insomnia. Aside from a muted personality and nightmares (the latter controlled by another medication), it was pretty fool proof and had very little consequence in my particular case.
As always, it depends on the person, but the blanket statement you quoted doesn't seem fair.
https://bnf.nice.org.uk/drug/quetiapine.html
https://www.nami.org/About-Mental-Illness/Treatments/Mental-...
> Quetiapine is a medication that works in the brain to treat schizophrenia. It is also known as a second generation antipsychotic (SGA) or atypical antipsychotic.
If doctors are prescribing seroquel for sleep problems i) that's pretty scary and ii) it's an off label use.
EDIT: here's the FA information showing that seroquel is an antipsychotic and is not licensed to treat sleep problems. https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2013/02...
There is a nice brief summary of this in Stahl's Essential Psychopharmacology.
To be clear, I am very much against prescribing anti-psychotics as sleeping aids. But I don't think there is a strong case for calling quetiapine anti-psychotic in low doses.
I've never taken anti-psychotics. I've asked my doctor for anti-depressants a few times (usually during relationship issues) and they are not my thing.
You're not a medical doctor, right? Obviously, or you wouldn't be giving out such frivolous advice. Dude... it's an anti-psychotic drug.
That's a rather common mistake and I'd guess many doctors do it as well. Treatment risk depends only on alternatives. A pill that gives your a 0.01% chance of sudden death is an absolute no-go for genpop, but may be heaven-sent for a particular patient.
Moreover, if you're severely addicted to Z-drugs like OP, the benefits probably do outweigh the side-effects. Not every person is the same, and the cost benefit analysis differs accordingly.
I'm really sorry, that sucks. There is some new medication that is supposed to treat it (I think I saw an ad on TV for it).
I’ve never had any meaningful side effects. No sleep walking, binge eating, or anything.
I am certainly, in the clinical sense, addicted - eg if I miss a dose I certainly notice, and there is some degree of tolerance, but I’m still better off than before I went on it.
I believe the correct term is "dependent".
There is a lot of misinformation and stigma out there, so I think it's really important to distinguish between addiction (e.g. insatiable cravings), medical dependence (e.g. someone taking anti-psychotics because they will otherwise have psychotic episodes, or someone taking antidepressants because they otherwise have manic depressive episodes), and physiological dependence, where your body's receptors have up/down-regulated to adjust to a "new normal", and withdrawal symptoms may occur if treatment is stopped.
