Internet search is your friend! I've never used abilify but these psych drugs are powerful and should be tapered off slowly to avoid harmful and uncomfortable side-effects. Be good to yourself!

You can't just come off of it cold turkey. As with any drug you've taken for a long time your brain/body has built a dependance to it. You have to come off of it by doing a slow taper. You lower the dosage that you take each day a week at a time, until you get to a point where your taking a small amount, generally <5mg per day and then you can stop it.

Now the next issue is, Abilify is an Anti-psychotic med, so it's most likely being used as your Mood Stabilizer, so you'll need a new one. So while your tapering down off of the Abilify, you'll need to be tritating up on a new Mood Stabilizer....you've got a lot to talk with your Pdoc about. You can't just go without a Mood Stabilizer or you'll more than likely go off the rails into a Manic Episode.

Red flag! It depends on what your illness/diagnosis is and Abilify is an anti-psychotic, not a mood-stabilizer as far as I know. You need to switch to another anti-psychotic.

I have been taking Abilify for schizoaffective-bipolar disorder for over 10 years and despite the tremors, I am happy with it. I give public performances and there are beta blockers such as Propranolol that helps the tremors and shaking.

It seems that you are having tardivedyskenesia. Your psychiatrist or ARPN should give you a different antipsychotic. This is not something to do whimsically. Closeril is one of those meds that have very little side effects but it requires monitoring of the white blood cell count.

Anyway, work with your doctor closely and good luck.

I was only on Ability for 4 months but I still had withdrawal after tapering it off. I had one week of flu like symptoms, nausea, vomiting, restless, and loss of appetite. The loss os appetite was so bad I had to literally force myself to eat. On the other hand, I lost the 10 pounds I gained while I was on it. I also lost the sluggish feeling I had daily. Hope this helps!

Victor,

Hi and welcome to the BP Board. In BiPolar patients Anti-psychotic medications like Abilify are often used as the "mood stabilizer" in our cocktail of medications. As are anti-seizure meds, and actual mood stabilizing minerals such as Lithium.

Many different psych meds are used off-label in different ways to create a combined cocktail that lets the brain chemistry of a BiPolar patient Stabilize. I've been BiPolar for 28 years.....I don't think there's a psych med combination that I've not used at one time or another.

Take care,
Kat