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stopping clozapine the after affects

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johnymac
Starting Member

1 Posts

Posted - 04/11/2012 : 16:56:42

hello to all that read this and i hope you think long and hard about taking clozapine this my experience of the after affects of taking clozapine for a long period i ve searched this site and could not find any posts about this subject i hope you find it imformative ,my diagnosis was sz my doc prescibed it for 15 years .it is a second generation drug the first gen had some serious problems like dying although i would recomend looking into this. i was some of the first to be put back on it .the clozapine was stopped strait away due too agranulocytosis a rare blood disorder witch is fatal,after two and a half weeks of daily blood test my blood cells went back to normal .i was taking 400mg a day a medium dose as i know people on 800mg .now heres the list of problems i have now! very dry gritty eyes i will have to use a gel med for the rest of my life,one too two hours sleep a night with constant nightmares and seeing thing that are not there and disurbing sounds every night i now have too take sleepers each night although the presciption stops soon due to high risk of heart attack god knows what im going too do when they stop .terrible head aches neally all day ,runny poo in the morning i used to be consipated due too clozapine ive had a stool sample that was normal,pain in my ears and jaw ,stiff muscles ,cramps in my hands ,clammy hands ,i had alot of blood after pooing witch stopped after two weeks never had that before ,i had ocd during taking clozapine another side effect which has now stopped ,hyper salivation which has stopped ,during the day i have less symtoms now then when i was taking it like memory problems and confused thinking, now i have to have tests on kidneys because ive got pain in my left lower adomin since clozapine was stopped ,it has probally enlarged my heart so going for scan .i recomend that if your going too take clozapine then do so for a short period of time then see how you feel afterwards as sz can last a few weeks a few months or if your unlucky a life time although therapy (very hard too get due to this goverment) and a good support network like family and freinds is always good for sz ,i feel that more research needs to be done for long term user like myself needs too be carried out ,ive seen my doc once since the clozapine stopped witch was last week and the clozapine stopped three months ago .im not impressed with the problem that it has caused and curse the day it was prescibed ,all of the health risks and side affects just aint worth it .ive never had any symtoms like this before and thought i was a healthy person, i live a clean life style im 38 and should not be going threw all this ,i hope that if you do sufer with sz that you look for other ways of coping. cya

john mchugh