For me, today is the first day on a new antipsychotic. It’s a sucky day. Even though I swapped out an antipsychotic and even though I started on the lowest dose possible, this antipsychotic is wrecking havoc with my day. I wish this wasn’t so predictable, but it is. For me, it’s just a fact that the first day on a new antipsychotic is terrible.

Why Start a New Antipsychotic?

Of course, there are many reasons why people start new medications, including antipsychotics. The last one might not have worked, they may need to augment their current medication(s), the may be trying to lessen side effects and so on. For me, I started this new antipsychotic to try to augment my current cocktail (lessen the depression) as well as fight the side effect of anxiety.

What’s the First Day on a New Antipsychotic Like?

My friend was kind enough to text me this morning to tell me that she hoped I would see changes after taking this new medication today. Changes? Yes. Positive changes? No.

I’ve taken pretty much every second-generation (atypical) antipsychotic there is so I have a lot of experience with this. For me, the first day on a new antipsychotic is almost always tired, fatigued, foggy, confused, woozy, dizzy, lethargic, headache-y and pretty much nonproductive. All I want to do is sleep and if you look at my fitbit, you’ll see very few steps indeed. And that’s not counting the effects that antipsychotics have had on me that have been significantly worse than that.

Even though it’s this tiny pill with a tiny bit of medication in it, it still seems to affect my brain in very big ways.

Anticipating the First Day on a New Antipsychotic

Now I know some of you are thinking: Aren’t you just exaggerating? After all, in the television commercials, everyone walks hand-in-hand in the sun after taking a psychiatric medication.

Life is not a television commercial.

Life, most especially, is not a drug television commercial.

And yes, after having antipsychotic experience after antipsychotic experience it is possible to be expecting terribleness to the point where terribleness is inevitable. I guess. But I swear to god, spend some time in my body and you’d be hard-pressed to believe that I am exaggerating one bit. But that’s me.

First Day on a New Antipsychotic, Last Day on a New Antipsychotic

It's the first day on a new antipsychotic medication for me and yes, it's terrible. Learn what being on an antipsychotic is like and what to do about it.Depending on how bad the side effects are from the new antipsychotic, it can scare people off the medication altogether. (Sometimes just the thought of it does.) I really can’t say as I blame them. Feeling terrible from the thing that is supposed to make you feel better is wretched. This is one of the reasons medication noncompliance (nonadherence, if you like) is such a big issue.

But things get better. Yup, the first day on a new antipsychotic is almost always terrible, but day 10 may not be and even if it is, day 20 may not be.

Now, humans aren’t really good with long-term anything. We want the now and tend to forget about the later. But antipsychotics are all about the later, and we, as patients, have to remember that. Doctors aren’t very good at stressing this so we have to be. We have to be able to talk ourselves through the terrible days on medication in the hopes that later days will be better. And we have to remember that it’s not just going to be the first day that is terrible. It is likely to be many days that are terrible before our bodies adjust to the new drug. That’s just an unfair fact of life.

And that’s a lot to talk ourselves through, I know.

But that’s what I’m doing and I hope it’s what other people can do too because these medications save lives and save quality-of-lives every day. But we have to be willing to go through all the terribleness to find the one and the dose that will actually work for us.