# If you're non-psychotic and take anti-psychotic medication what happens? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 14, 2006, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-non-psychotic-and-take-anti-psychotic-medication-what-happens/344513 "2006-02-14T19:37:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2012, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-non-psychotic-and-take-anti-psychotic-medication-what-happens/344513/21 "2012-02-19T19:46:18Z")
> [@KneeSid](#): > > I saw a program about this on a news magazine (Maybe "60 Minutes’) where this is happening a lot. Apparently the anti-depressants are regulated heavily for off-label usage, but the anti-pys drugs aren’t. > > So a doctor may want to use an anti-depressant but can’t, so he’ll chose an anti-psychotic instead. I’m not aware of this. I am prescribed two different anti-depressants; one is a tricyclic antidepressant and the other is an SSRI anti-depressant. Both of these medications are prescribed off-label for the treatment/prevention of migraine headaches. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2012, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-non-psychotic-and-take-anti-psychotic-medication-what-happens/344513/22 "2012-02-19T20:01:46Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > Why does clonidine make one sleepy? I do believe it is also the one of my 4 BP meds that the cardiologist has me on that slows down my heartbeat to a normal pace as well as help lower the BP from 210/190 to non-exploding head levels. > > [It is responsible for my thrice daily nap attacks … I nap after my morning and noon doses, and just go to bed after my nighttime dose, life works better if I just sleep when the drugs make me :smack: though unfortunately I wake up in the middle of the night for 4 or 5 hours because of the damned segmented sleep crap.] I don’t think you’re suggesting so, clonidine is not an antipsychotic or anything similar. I was told it has an extremely short half-life, so to take it for the purposes I did I either had to take several a day, or the patch, which I went with. I didn’t note any great difference in tiredness, although I have been drowsy lately. I switched to similar guanfacine, because the patch was a PITA. I can’t time-match the drowsiness so I dunno. I was on atypical antipsychotics Zyprexa (Olanzapine) and Risperdal (Risperidone). I’m not sure why, either OCD or suspected bipolar? I quit when I started to nod off at the wheel. There’s the drug Abilify on TV. They sell it as an adjunct like BuSpar (e.g. take along with an antidepressant to boost). Thing is, it is also a mood stabilizer and antipsychotic, but I think they don’t want to scare away the unipolar depression people. ---
**Author:** ![Mdcastle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/958977/32.png) [@Mdcastle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mdcastle)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-non-psychotic-and-take-anti-psychotic-medication-what-happens/344513/23 "2012-02-20T02:23:59Z")
I agree that if someone not used to it or not used to that much of it takes them, being zonked out is the most likely, and probably only effect. A few ancedotes: On Parking Wars someone got his car towed after a DUI. He took his girlfriend’s Seroquel by mistake and fell asleep at a red light. In Europe Seroquel got mixed in with some OTC painkiller. The company recalled them all but said “drowsyness” was the worst that would happend if someone took it by mistake. (Seroquel is vary nondescript looking, my XR 150 tablets are the exact same size, shape, and color of Excedrin caplets. At $10 a pill couldn’t they make them look pretty???) The cliche of being put in straightjackets at psyche hospitals really doesn’t happen any more, instead the try to restrain people chemically. You guessed it, massive amounts of anti-psychotics. Unlike Benzos you don’t need to worry about them stopping breathing, they’ll just go to sleep and wake up with a few hours later. ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-non-psychotic-and-take-anti-psychotic-medication-what-happens/344513/24 "2012-02-20T04:31:07Z")
Great story: Ex gf, then married, and in the party mode, got some anti psychs from one of her party friends. She took one, and it kept her buzzed for about a day. Her husband, a total retard when it came to drugs, took something like 5 of them. First sign of trouble-impotence. Next sign-his mouth would fly open, and wouldn’t shut. He would be there with his eyes bugging out in shock, and trying to speak, but he couldn’t close his mouth. Next sign-mouth would slam shut, and he couldn’t open it.This went on for a couple of days, and he lost some of his teeth because of it. Even funnier (in retrospect) he was a cab driver at the time, and this bizarre behavior (excepting the impotence, I’m guessing) was going on while he had customers in the cab! Finally, his wife took him to the ER. She told him not to tell them that he got the drugs from her. Of course the cops came in, and as she was walking to his room in ER, she heard her husband tell the cops “I got them from my wife. I don’t know where she got them from.” She left. ---
**Author:** ![contradancer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9dc877/32.png) [@contradancer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/contradancer)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 8:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-non-psychotic-and-take-anti-psychotic-medication-what-happens/344513/25 "2012-02-21T08:29:12Z")
> [@Queen\_Tonya](#): > > I was coming in just to post about Seroquel actually, my son recently began taking it as a sleeping aid. His eyes just about bugged out of his head when the doc casually mentioned “It’s an anti-psychotic and blah blah blah”. I think he thinks it gives him some weird coolness points. > > He’s taken clonidine as a sleep sedative for years, despite not having high blood pressure. I wouldn’t think anti-psy drugs would be exempt from the off-label usages common in every other class of meds, right? Be careful with Clonidine; they gave it to me in the emergency room and it made me feel so terrible I thought if I had to feel like that for very long I would kill myself. I literally could not stand feeling that way physically. After I figured out what was causing it I switched bp meds. It was indescribable; as if I was rotting from the inside out and my brain could not figure out what was happening so it went into crisis mode. A feeling like you absolutely cannot cope with anything. Never before or since. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-non-psychotic-and-take-anti-psychotic-medication-what-happens/344513/26 "2012-02-21T20:29:25Z")
I will reiterate what I said six years ago in post 9. There is published research that has come out since then that validates my assertions. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-non-psychotic-and-take-anti-psychotic-medication-what-happens/344513/27 "2012-02-21T21:03:44Z")
Cool. The same is true for most psychiatric drugs: they have the precision of a cylinder-choke shotgun. Like if you make one that _only_ targets dopamine, and not norepinephrine, epinephrine, or even serotonin, then great. However, it doesn’t help if it targets all dopaminergic systems along with the ones associated with schizophrenia, so you get all kinds of side effects along with it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-non-psychotic-and-take-anti-psychotic-medication-what-happens/344513.md?page=1)