I have something I need to admit to, here: I didn’t take my medication as prescribed, last night. Instead, I doubled up on my Seroquel and skipped my Neurontin and Lamictal. I’ll explain why in a new post, but first let me talk to you about Seroquel.
Oh how I love my Seroquel. It is the most reliable sleep aid I have ever encountered. Because of Seroquel, I can guzzle my beloved Diet Coke and iced tea from the moment I wake up until the moment I go to bed without having to suffer through caffeine-induced insomnia. Because of Seroquel, I can choose to go to bed at 3am without worrying that I’ll waste a moment of my precious bedtime tossing and turning. Because of Seroquel I never have to thrash around for hours on end in a torment of stress-induced rumination. It knocks me out, nearly every time. It doesn’t produce a “high”, but neither does it make me feel queasy or leave an odd taste or sensation in my mouth (a-la Ambien or Lunesta), and it doesn’t have any impact at all on the number of hours I am able to sleep at a stretch. I don’t build up a tolerance to it. I am never tempted to take it during the day.
In fact, Seroquel causes only two problems in my life that really bother me: 1) I am completely unable to sleep without Seroquel and haven’t been able to stop taking it since I started taking it many years ago; 2) Over the past several months I have developed a side-effect that is absolutely horrible: I lose the ability to swallow about an hour after I take it.
My dependency on Seroquel bothers me a lot, and it’s a problem I’ve read about again and again in posts all over the Internet by other people who take it. In fact, I often wonder if taking Seroquel for a long period of time changes something in your brain chemistry so that you are, literally, unable to ever fall asleep naturally again. I went through a period of several months, last year, when the only psycho-pharmaceutical I was on was 25mg of Seroquel. That’s the lowest dose of Seroquel you can take, and the pill itself is so tiny that it really can’t be cut in half. People who take Seroquel as a mood stabilizer are often prescribed 800mg or even 900mg of the drug per day (I can’t imagine how that would impact me – I would be catatonic, unable to function at all). When I tried to stop taking that 25mg per day I suffered extreme withdrawal symptoms, the worst three of which were intense itching all over my body coupled with intense joint pain all over my body, along with complete insomnia. I think the longest I made it without Seroquel was three days.
The problem of being unable to swallow started a few months ago, and it is the most miserable, awful feeling. The smooth muscles in the back of my throat simply stop working. I can usually trigger my swallowing reflex by sitting up and drinking something, but not always.
I haven’t spoken to my doctor about this problem because I know it means that I should stop taking Seroquel, and I can’t imagine how I would do that. I keep postponing the conversation because, after all, I do eventually manage to fall asleep despite the horrid sensation (that’s how thoroughly it knocks me out). I’ve also wondered if maybe it’s the combination of Seroquel and Lamictal and Neurontin, all of which I take before I go to bed. I started trying to space my medications out because of this side effect, so I usually take my Lamictal and Neurontin about a hour before I take my Seroquel. Spacing out my medications helps a little, but not a lot.
At any rate, since I got a wild hair and decided not to take my Lamictal and Neurontin last night, I arbitrarily decided to double up on my Seroquel, instead. My thinking was that I would be awake off and on all night because of withdrawal from Lamictal and Neurontin, and that doubling up on my Seroquel would help me sleep through it.
And this is what happened: I stumbled to bed, closed my eyes, took a few deep breaths, and then had the sensation that no matter how deeply I breathed I wasn’t getting enough oxygen. The sensation scared me so I sat up to gather my senses, and that’s when I realized that the real problem was that I couldn’t swallow at all and, more than that, my throat was collapsing every time I laid down. And then my legs got restless. I was kicking and kicking and kicking. Oh God, the misery! I got up and weaved in to the kitchen where I tried to drink a little water, and it was like this: fill my mouth with water, tilt my head back, wait and wait and wait for the swallow reflex to kick in and then gulp. I tried eating a flour tortilla, thinking that the chewing action might kick my muscles back to life, but gave up when I realized that I was at risk of choking myself. By then I was so sedated I could barely keep my eyes open. I said a little prayer, put faith in the fact that I’ve never heard of anyone dying from 200mg of Seroquel, and went to bed. My last waking thought was wishing I hadn’t taken the Seroquel.
I slept in, today. Awakened at 12:50, which is 4 or 5 hours later than I normally sleep (thank goodness it’s Sunday). Why in the hell did I decide not to take my Lamictal and Neurontin, last night? It doesn’t make any sense. I haven’t done anything like that in a couple of years. Why now?
Well, the simple answer is doubt. And I’ll write more about that in my next post.
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