# zyprexa/olanzapine is awesome (at least for me)



## Psyborg (Dec 23, 2018)

it works wonders for me . I take 7.5mg zyprexa at night and 250mg zoloft/sertraline in the morning

zyprexa is a great med for me . not sure if it might work for you guys too but I thought I better make a thread


----------



## curiousmind (Oct 31, 2019)

Someone else I know with DPDR is also on an olanzapine regimen and she says it improves her symptoms too. If I may ask, which symptoms of yours has improved with this medication?


----------



## Psyborg (Dec 23, 2018)

the "I am dead / I died" feeling has become a lot better . almost fully gone

I know myself more again . who I am etc. . my emotions have improved and I feel less like a robot. and I feel love towards my family again. it is not perfect yet but a lot better

I dont see colors too bright anymore (the cartoon like feeling)

my ability to remember memories has slightly improved too

I can handle intrusive thoughts a little better . but this might also be with the help of zoloft along with it

-----------------------------------------------------

my dp had already improved before taking zyprexa though . I also made a thread before where I stated that I am mostly recovered . but zyprexa made it even better . I am happy to take it . and it doesnt even lead to weight problems on me ! really nice


----------



## NomdeGuerra (Jan 4, 2019)

250 mg Sertaline??? Wow. That's a lot. Really. 
Thought the maximum was 200mg


----------



## Psyborg (Dec 23, 2018)

yeah I also said to the doc that it is a lot but she said since I have ocd it is ok


----------



## 106473 (Feb 7, 2017)

Olanzapine was good for me, was on 20mg, did put on a lot of weight but eh what's more important.

Good on ya!


----------



## Trith (Dec 31, 2019)

I just started Olanzapine 5 mg 5 days ago, and the effects I am feeling so far is a kind of soothing atmosphere and a little more awareness of my surroundings. But I still feel emotionally disconnected as much as before. (Sertraline made me more connected when I tried it. I was on 50 mg only). But people react so differently it is probably risky to make general conclusions. I also had times when I saw colors brighter, and then had a little depersonalisation episode, as if the colors were so bright they crossed the barriers of my identity and changed me from the inside so that I could not recognize myself anymore (it sounds weird but it is weird). This was gone with both other neuroleptics I have tried, Risperidone and Amisulpride. And so far it is the same with Olanzapine.

Oh and also Olanzapine makes me super hungry too.


----------



## eddy1886 (Oct 11, 2012)

Low dose Antipsychotics can be very very helpful for alot of people....

They wont eliminate the DP but they make it very manageable...

I firmly believe its because they target dopamine regulation....And this is what I reckon is at the heart of DP......Of course I cannot prove it.....

In my own case a low dose Antipsychotic gave me my life back 30 years ago and still does the same job all these years later...If I even stop it for 2 days my DP comes right back to exactly where it was all those years ago when i first became very very ill with this condition...


----------



## Trith (Dec 31, 2019)

eddy1886 said:


> [...] If I even stop it for 2 days my DP comes right back to exactly where it was all those years ago when i first became very very ill with this condition....


I always heard that antipsychotics should be stopped very gradually. Once I missed two doses of Risperidone, so 36h without it, and I actually felt much worse than before taking it. I had weird psychotic sensations that I didn't have before, I was more depersonalized and felt a kind of very strange threatening atmosphere and tough attention problems for at least 10 days. I think it is normal to feel bad if one stops abruptly, but that doesn't mean it cannot be ok if one stops gradually.

Or maybe it is not possible at all for some people if DPDR to live without antipsychotics, for example if DPDR is related to a certain illness. I am always upset when people say that "you have DP/DR because of anxiety, trust me, you don't have schizophrenia", or even worse some say that "because you have DP/DR it means you cannot have schizophrenia" as if DPDR was a protection against psychosis.... No, you always can have schizophrenia, and DPDR is even a symptom of it. Some people also say that that "if you worry about having schizophrenia it means you don't have it, because people who have schizophrenia don't know about it", it is just a misconception about psychosis. As a matter of fact you can have some form of schizophrenia without anosognosia, or without hearing voices. My DPDR made me worry about having schizophrenia, and still, psychiatrists thought too I might have it, giving my symptoms. But sorry, this is maybe not too related to your post.


----------



## Psyborg (Dec 23, 2018)

Trith said:


> I always heard that antipsychotics should be stopped very gradually. Once I missed two doses of Risperidone, so 36h without it, and I actually felt much worse than before taking it. I had weird psychotic sensations that I didn't have before, I was more depersonalized and felt a kind of very strange threatening atmosphere and tough attention problems for at least 10 days. I think it is normal to feel bad if one stops abruptly, but that doesn't mean it cannot be ok if one stops gradually.
> Or maybe it is not possible at all for some people if DPDR to live without antipsychotics, for example if DPDR is related to a certain illness. I am always upset when people say that "you have DP/DR because of anxiety, trust me, you don't have schizophrenia", or even worse some say that "because you have DP/DR it means you cannot have schizophrenia" as if DPDR was a protection against psychosis.... No, you always can have schizophrenia, and DPDR is even a symptom of it. Some people also say that that "if you worry about having schizophrenia it means you don't have it, because people who have schizophrenia don't know about it", it is just a misconception about psychosis. As a matter of fact you can have some form of schizophrenia without anosognosia, or without hearing voices. My DPDR made me worry about having schizophrenia, and still, psychiatrists thought too I might have it, giving my symptoms. But sorry, this is maybe not too related to your post.


imo dp has psychotic tendencies . its a weird mix of anxiety neurosis , ocd , and mild psychosis


----------



## eddy1886 (Oct 11, 2012)

Psyborg said:


> imo dp has psychotic tendencies . its a weird mix of anxiety neurosis , ocd , and mild psychosis


Agree 100%


----------



## curiousmind (Oct 31, 2019)

Trith said:


> I am always upset when people say that "you have DP/DR because of anxiety, trust me, you don't have schizophrenia"


I get where you are coming from, but if you have *primary DPD *then you do not overlap with schizophrenia. This isn't an opinion, rather this is well established taxonomically in the clinical literature. The medical sciences are not perfect (no academic discipline is), however mental health has been a topic of clinical analysis for centuries, and there are old folks in their labs and offices researching, reading, writing, testing and debating clinical phenomena. If you do a bit of reading into it, you will find a long history of literature about DPD that started in the late 1800s. These "old folks" are professionals who have made a clear distinction between schizophrenia and DPD in terms of formal classification but also the implicated brain structures as a result of investigation and debate that took more than a hundred years long. They emphasise that there are many differences, but a key differentiator between the two disorders is reality-testing, that of which is impaired in schizophrenia but functional in the DPD.

Now, this isn't to say that you cannot develop schizophrenia just because you have primary DPD, because I agree with you in that you *potentially could *just like anybody else including currently healthy people. But it is very likely that you *will not*. This is clear from the epidemiological research. Your chances are the same as a healthy person, and thats the point. Just like with anything in life that becomes subject to analysis there are always outliers, there always exist abnormalities and cases that don't lay on the trend-line, but *it is very unlikely that if you have primary DPD that you will develop schizophrenia*. "But what if I am that outlier" --> this is anxiety. Just because we think something in our mind and worry about it, it doesn't necessarily become true. If we suspect psychotic symptoms then we should refer to a psychiatrist who can help diagnose us. If the clinician says theres no problem, and the people around you do not suspect anything odd about you, then you do not have a problem. You may think you do and worry about it, but thats not necessarily reality.



Trith said:


> "because you have DP/DR it means you cannot have schizophrenia" as if DPDR was a protection against psychosis.... No, you always can have schizophrenia, and DPDR is even a symptom of it. Some people also say that that "if you worry about having schizophrenia it means you don't have it, because people who have schizophrenia don't know about it", it is just a misconception about psychosis. As a matter of fact you can have some form of schizophrenia without anosognosia


Yes, if you have schizophrenia or a psychotic disorder you may present with symptoms of DPD, but this is not a "schizophrenia-thing". People with depression, anxiety, bipolar, even OCD can have *secondary symptoms of depersonalization*, same goes for schizophrenia. I don't think anyone is arguing that DPDR is a protection against psychosis, rather that if you are worrying about developing psychosis, then you should acknowledge that you are worried. Worrying about something and actually experiencing something is two separate things.

It is dangerous to assume that everyone on this forum has primary DPD, this diagnosis is very hard to claim. For this reason, it is very important to get an accurate diagnosis from a mental health professional. You should never self-diagnose yourself with any condition, we are not capable of doing so on our own, we need the assessment of someone from the outside. This is especially the case if you have a psychosis-spectrum disorder.



eddy1886 said:


> Agree 100%


How so? I do not see any overlap, and the clinicians don't either.


----------



## DPCat (Feb 11, 2020)

I dont know if it fits this topic, but imo DPDR can literally be caused by anything. In another post, a guy claimed his DP was induced by so called vestibular migrains, which totally would explain why tricyclic antidepressants like Sertralin + antikonvulsants like Lamotrigin seem to help some of us. (since those meds are also given to people with vestibular migrain issues). But just my speculations.

Im going to an ENT next week. I expect some results because i hardly struggled with dizziness and vertigo shortly before my DPDR kicked in.

I could be very wrong though, since i also have PTSD and gen. anxiety disorder. We'll see.


----------



## Chen (Jan 2, 2020)

do you suffer from gaining weight=


----------



## Psyborg (Dec 23, 2018)

Chen said:


> do you suffer from gaining weight=


no not at all . which is awesome


----------



## Trith (Dec 31, 2019)

curiousmind said:


> I get where you are coming from, but if you have *primary DPD *then you do not overlap with schizophrenia. This isn't an opinion, rather this is well established taxonomically in the clinical literature. The medical sciences are not perfect (no academic discipline is), however mental health has been a topic of clinical analysis for centuries, and there are old folks in their labs and offices researching, reading, writing, testing and debating clinical phenomena. If you do a bit of reading into it, you will find a long history of literature about DPD that started in the late 1800s. These "old folks" are professionals who have made a clear distinction between schizophrenia and DPD in terms of formal classification but also the implicated brain structures as a result of investigation and debate that took more than a hundred years long. They emphasise that there are many differences, but a key differentiator between the two disorders is reality-testing, that of which is impaired in schizophrenia but functional in the DPD.
> 
> Now, this isn't to say that you cannot develop schizophrenia just because you have primary DPD, because I agree with you in that you *potentially could *just like anybody else including currently healthy people. But it is very likely that you *will not*. This is clear from the epidemiological research. Your chances are the same as a healthy person, and thats the point. Just like with anything in life that becomes subject to analysis there are always outliers, there always exist abnormalities and cases that don't lay on the trend-line, but *it is very unlikely that if you have primary DPD that you will develop schizophrenia*. "But what if I am that outlier" --> this is anxiety. Just because we think something in our mind and worry about it, it doesn't necessarily become true. If we suspect psychotic symptoms then we should refer to a psychiatrist who can help diagnose us. If the clinician says theres no problem, and the people around you do not suspect anything odd about you, then you do not have a problem. You may think you do and worry about it, but thats not necessarily reality.
> 
> ...


I just meant that it is not possible to say to someone "no you are just anxious, you have DPD but you don't have schizophrenia". Even if the probability was very low. Just as you cannot tell someone "no your airplane is not going to crash, especially if you have anxiety and worry about it", this makes little sense to me. Airplanes do crash (and even to treat anxiety I don't think therapists make people believe airplane crashes never happen, rather they talk about accepting uncertainty). Anyway, I do have DPD and at times I have been very anxious of having schizophrenia, nevertheless I did get a kind of diagnosis of schizo-affective disorder from a psychiatrist after I heard voices when on zoloft, a person who had worked with psychotics told me I look like a schizophrenic who hasn't decompensated yet, another psychotherapist immediately questioned me for positive symptoms of schizophrenia when I described my symptoms of DPD. These were people with professional experience.

Of course you need more information about the person to know if they can have schizophrenia, but so do you if you want to tell them they don't have schizophrenia. Just like it doesn't make sense to say that airplanes don't crash, I think it doesn't make sense to say that people surely don't have schizophrenia, especially when the only thing we know about them is just that they have anxiety. Sure you can tell them that because they feel all the weird symptoms of DPD doesn't mean they have schizophrenia, and that a lot of people worry about having it, and actually don't have it. But it is not possible to make a diagnosis for someone over the internet after a few posts about anxiety, this is what I believe. And even if DPD alone, and DPD with schizophrenia are clearly separated, this still doesn't solve the problem of finding out in which category one is.


----------



## Psyborg (Dec 23, 2018)

the difference between DP/DR and Psychosis is that when you have DP/DR you think "am I dead ? I feel dead somehow" but when you are psychotic you 100% believe you are dead for example and then you go to your own funeral or do other odd things .

or when you have DP/DR you might think you are somehow not yourself anymore but you still are reality based . when you are psychotic you can think that you are a certain celeb , a certain movie character , or even a religious figure or something

but to me personally there is overlap between dp/dr and psychosis . but maybe my dp is just extreme ....I mean some people say "it's just anxiety" ...nope ...not in my case ...I very well know what anxiety is and I also had some mild dp/dr in the past too but the shit I have been through in the last years with dp/dr is no way "just anxiety" . it is something more odd

it is true that when you lower your anxiety that the dp/dr gets better though thats for sure . also keeping yourself busy , eating right , working out , trying to not stress it and not worry to not recover etc.

but I also have to say that I wished I would have found zyprexa earlier . not fully sure if it would have corrected my dp/dr fully because when I started zyprexa my dp/dr was already 70% or so gone (now 80-90% ) but for me it is a very good medication and I dont see a reason not to take it and suffer .

btw. I actually think having dp/dr the whole time is a lot worse than having psychosis sometimes . I dont want to downplay psychosis but when you have some psychotic phases you just take medication and have councellings etc. to get your illness under control . but having dp/dr the whole time is constant stress


----------



## LizFerret (Mar 3, 2020)

When it comes to meds, it's very different for each individual.
Almost impossible to tell what will work and in what doses.


----------

