Experiences - Quetiapine (Seroquel) withdrawal experiences

[bcubed]

Oops..."drug addicts" who "abuse drugs" have "withdrawls"; "patients" who are "prescribed medication" have "rebound effects." How silly of me!

In any event...SWIM is a 35y.o. male, prescribed Seroquel for a sleep disorder. On up to 800mg/day, SWIM went AMA, outside the USA for surgery that ultimately allowed him to discontinue use of the drug. The following is a timeline of withdrawl symptoms from 400 mg/day. (Note that days 1-7 were while incarcerated.)

Day 1: Agitation, no sleep.
Day 2: Mediocre sleep (thru day 14), histamine response (thru day 14) (sneezing, allergies, etc), diahrohhea.
Days 3-6: Improvement in mood, loss of lethargy, restoration of libido.
Days 7-10: Amplification of libido (read: almost comically horny), amplification of emotions.
Days 10-12: Restoration of emotions to near-baseline.
Days 13-14: Restoration of libido to near-baseline.

Swimmers, stay away from this drug! The big problem is that chronic use stifles one's ambitions as well as preventing one from experiencing the emotional range necessary to allow for higher human emotions such as love, empathy, etc. A loose, non-scientific description would be that it "deadens the soul."

What SWIM can't figure out is the histamine issue. He's always had allergies, which lessened roughly congruent with his use of this drug. He's not sure if present histamine response is W/D or a return to his personal baseline.