DOSE:

25 mg

oral

Pharms - Aripiprazole

BODY WEIGHT:

75 kg

A few years ago I was prescribed this medication by a psychiatrist as a short term drug to see how I reacted to it as I was experiencing low mood, poor motivation & lethargy (14 x 25mg tablets).

Since this was a few years ago, I don't remember the specific activities I engaged in. About 4 - 5 days in, I noticed that I couldn't sit still or focus on anything.

This increased steadily throughout the day and by the evening, I was squirming uncontrollably in my bed and I felt like my fingers and toes were made of chalk, and every time my fingers or toes touched each other, it would feel the same as when you hear nails running down a chalkboard. The ridges of my fingerprints were stone. The palms of my hands and the soles of my feet experienced sharp anxiety prongs that came-and-went. I could feel muscles contracting uncontrollably all over my body. I couldn't sleep.

Although my behavior and attitude seemed, to others, to have improved over the few days I was taking this medication, on the inside I was feeling a hellish landscape of a type of discomfort I had never felt before.

It is a shame that the internal side effects were too much for me to bear because of the improvements others reported to me:

I seemed happier/smiling - I was probably grimacing
I seemed more productive - was probably just pacing more/restless.
I got up out of bed earlier - I barely slept after day 4 due to the squirming, involuntary movements.

I stopped taking the medication on day 6, as by then it was beyond doubt to me that it was the medicine causing this.

Upon return to my psychiatrist to report back to him, he said stop taking the medicine as the side effects would probably just get worse if I continued.

All in all, I don't understand what this drug is supposed to do or why I was prescribed it: in retrospect it was interesting because I was deemed to have "improved" however, on the inside, it was an almost unbearable incessant feeling. I am glad that feeling went away after discontinuation.

Exp Year: 2020	ExpID: 115958
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 22
Published: Dec 14, 2021	Views: 1,267
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Pharms - Aripiprazole (422) : Difficult Experiences (5), Medical Use (47), Various (28)