I have, on another page of this site, hinted that if Haloperidol doesn't work for you then you can look forward to a long and painful process of finding the medication for you.
And, while I don't want people to settle for the first med they're offered if it doesn't work, I think I need to stress just how painful this search can be.
I shall use my favorite example for this : Myself
I am, as of 2004, 25 years old. At age 13 I was
diagnosed with Tourette's syndrome. At age 17 I needed to go on
medication. I have since been on 5 different antipsychotics.
It started quite normally with Haloperidol. The vast majority of people
with Tourette's find haloperidol works very well. I was...not thrilled.
It sedated me quite a bit, but more than that, it didn't really work on my tics.
Fine...no problem. Next stop, Pimozide. Pimozide is arguably the
only Tourette syndrome specific drug on the market. It has minimum side
effects and works very well. It's not cheap. In a country where the
PBS system makes the average prescription $26.00, Pimozide is $50.00 per month.
But, by using pharmacy direct, that can be cut down to $35.00, and that is
borderline manageable. The switch from one antipsychotic is quite
easy. You don't have to step down (especially because of the very low
doses used in Tourette syndrome), you just stop one and take the other instead.
Haloperidol to Pimozide was easy...a bit less sedation, a bit more tic control,
it's all good.
The major catch is that Pimozide is clinically proven to increase the Qt
interval. Or in other words, it spaces out the "lub" from the "dub" in your
heart. But it doesn't do it uniformly, and this causes heart spasms and
occasionally death. I just came across an article today that nicely said
"If you take Pimozide and Zoloft at the same time, you will die."
It's not nice, especially in the long run.
So, right, onto the next one. Tetrabenazine lasted exactly one dose. This was because I didn't have the energy to take a second one...lifting your hand to your mouth takes a lot of effort when you are tranquilised. So no luck there.
Risperdol was the obvious next choice. I had been on it before as a child and had found it mildly effective. The only side effect it seemed to have was weight gain - roughly 1 kg per week. I don't know if you've ever put on one kilogram per week, but the human body can't cope with it. Things split. Organs get a bit crushed. Joints suddenly realise they have to lift twice the weight they did a month ago without any practice. But still, needs must as the devil drives (or something to that effect), so I went on it again, and at least started having a good nights sleep. I also enjoyed watching my GP and Psychiatrist fight over who was going to lie to PBS. (I'm hoping I don't get traced here, but Risperdol is only PBS if it's to treat schizophrenia. That little lie saves me about $200.00 per month!)
After about 10 kilograms, supplemented by another 16 from Aropax, I decided that clinically obese what not what I wanted from myself, so I became a tester for Abilify. This went on for two weeks. While Ablify doesn't have the nasty risk of Tardive Dyskinesia, it does have the rather unpleasant side effect of making you feel nauseas, tired, and makes your body temperature jump all over the place.
So, next was Seroquel, an untried antipsychotic. But intuition states that it should work for the same reasons that the others do. Now most Touretters only need 1 or 2 milligrams of an antipsychotic to have almost total control over their tics. By the time I reached 100mg, with no effect on my tics whatsoever, I gave up.
Where did that leave me?
Back to the only drug that worked for me...Pimozide.
And guess what?
I'm on Zoloft too!
So far my heart is still beating, as my compulsory 3 monthly
Electrocardiogram (ECG) stated.
And I'm afraid to say that it's worth the risk of sudden convulsive heart
failure...because I can lead a normal life again!