I had an interesting (awful) experience with Seroquel a few months ago. I withdrew from it almost two years ago now but still had some on hand.

I hadn't slept in several days due to stress and moving around a lot. I was not manic, but extremely sleep deprived. I decided a good knocking out would be a good thing.

I took 25 mg (a very small dose) and did indeed get knocked out. I slept over 11 hours. However I woke up in an irritable hellish state, fogged out of my brain and suicidal---which I had not been at all previous. Also my eyes were rolling back into my head involuntarily according to my husband---I was not aware of it.

It's clear I'd developed some sort of frightening sensitivity to it. I threw the rest of the bottle away that day. I'd rather be sleepless.

I've also taken a new attitude about my withdrawal...no going back up on things. For a while I occasionally took an extra Klonopin for sleep and that backfired on me one day too. Now I've found an arsenal of natural sleep aids and they work pretty well for the most part. But yeah, sleep problems are there...and like the reader above I think I have CNS damage...I'm not ready to say it's permanent...I'm working really hard at healing and I believe in the neuroplasticity of the brain.

I was givin seroquel for depression back in 2004/5. When I started medications I was far from being "severely depressed". One medication lead to another and another and pretty soon is was on one cocktail after another and another. Needless to say, my depression got worse and worse so I had ECT along we more medications. You guessed it, the ECT didn't work either so I was put on maintenance ECT. I figured my life couldn't be any worse than it was on medications so I aburptly stopped them. At the time I thought the ECT and the medications were keeping me alive. I didn't want to live anymore. After the intial withdrawls I found I was no longer dperessed. But because of the ECT I had lost 25 points on my IQ, now have a learning disorder that prevents me from learning new information, and have sereve problems with short term memory.

I often wonder how many other people are recieving ECT because the medications they are taking. I wonder if what is being called "treatment resistant" depression in really depression that is caused by the medications.

Funny how not one doctor even considered the drugs made my depression so bad. Funny too how they faught me tooth and nail to go back on medications even when I told them I felt so much better not being on them.

have never taken seroquel, but from what i've seen of its side effects it has something in common with a drug i personally was victimized by: zyprexa.

what is it about these drugs, anyway, that causes such weight gain / metabolic problems?

Like the writer you quoted, I also took Seroquel for over a year for a questionable bipolar II diagnosis. A diagnosis that, on reflection, I think was primarily based on symptoms resulting from drug affects and withdrawal affects of other medications. I loved Seroquel.

At 25 mg, I could sleep again. But my other symptoms all got worse. As we increased the dose the wired/caffeinated/agitatedness got much worse. I thought it was my "disorder". Even though I charted my medication and the affects, I couldn't see the relationship. My thinking was so messed up.

The affects of the drugs helped convince me that I did indeed have bipolar disorder: here I was again seriously depressed. I had no idea that the drugs could cause these affects.

Thank you so much for getting this info out there. I am very concerned about the expansion of use of these meds and that the docs prescribing them seem to not know the full range of affects.