r/Akathisia

Developed involuntary movements and jerky motions as well as some involuntary noises, shouts and noises that I can’t even picture coming from me. Except I’m the only one there. All involuntary and been getting worse since November when I went back on my zyprexa. I was previously on it for 5 years and it was the I ly medicine that made me feel like a person. I had to go off it for brain surgery last fall but now I’ve been having these worsening symptoms

Context: I developed CPTSD from prolonged abuse and barely could sleep 1-4 hours a night. I left that environment and was prescribed Ativan. I've taken them intermittently for 3.5 months. 25 mg total. I had a heavy cluster week end of May I took 9mg. Then June 10 1mg then waited 24 days and took one last night. It barely helped with sleep this time and this morning I felt very anxious towards the afternoon. Feeling bad about taking the Ativan (I told myself no more benzos no matter what) I felt a wave of anxiety and feeling of restlessness I just needed to get up and move around the house. This feeling comes in waves usually like a chest pressure or unease and I just need to walk around. I admit that I've had something similar before when extremely anxious even without meds but I'm worried if I have it now. I already had severe hyperarousal before any Ativan use that has made sleep almost impossible.

How can I rule out akathisia??

Hello everyone,

*THIS IS NOT JUST ANOTHER PETITION*

The amazing Kim Witzciak recently launched a website serving as a petition for those with PSSD (and other SSRI injuries) to sign and document their experiences of harm with these medications.

It serves as a central place to show the volume of people being injured by these drugs. To convince those in power that these injuries are devastating a massive population size, deferring to Reddit groups won’t cut it/isn’t official enough. As such, this petition will be the MAIN SOURCE of reference when used to show the people we need to convince this is ruining/ending lives.

Please sign this, mention your experience and age if you can!!

We have SUCH power in numbers if we can all band together!

TW: mentions of suicidal ideation; detailed descriptions of akathisia

hi all, not sure what i’m looking to gain from posting this aside from just documenting my experience for myself and others to look back on. for background, i am relatively medically complex (ehlers-danlos and some other things) and i have some serious psych diagnoses (long-standing DPDR and CPTSD, recently suspected DID/OSDD1) so my thresholds for pain and misery are quite high. i have been to the emergency room three times in the past week for severe head pressure & possible cerebrospinal fluid leak, which has been hell in itself.

yesterday morning around 3:00 AM i was back at the ER with pressure and pain in my eyes, and fluid draining from my nose. they gave me a cocktail of IV meds to help my symptoms which included benadryl, toradol, and droperidol. almost immediately i was in pure hell.

i’ve had nearly every psychiatric symptom under the sun throughout my life - severe dissociation, amnesia, psychosis, and complete psychogenic blindness, to name a few. well absolutely NOTHING prepared me for akathisia. i had never heard of it, had no idea it was a thing or what the risks of these meds were. but within a few minutes of injection i felt the heaviest sense of dread and terror that i’ve ever felt. i honestly thought i was dying. like my skeleton was vibrating, my skin was burning but without any pain, and there was such a massive sense of “you need to get out of here” but my body was paralyzed. it wasn’t anxiety, or fear, or psychosis - it was like a portal to hell opened inside me and i felt all of it and nothing at the same time. it was pure torture. time didn’t exist and i was in an infinite loop with no escape in sight. i genuinely felt that the only way out would be to end my life and hope it wasn’t eternal. time was moving fast and also slow, i had no idea what was happening around me because all i could focus on was the world ending and the electricity in my veins.

i think the worst part was everyone around me acting normal and fine. i think a dissociative alter of sorts just fully took over, because my body was ALSO acting like everything was normal and fine. no one that i interacted with, including my wife, had any idea that something was wrong. it felt like an intense secret i couldn’t possibly share, or they’d be afflicted too. i felt that i couldn’t keep my eyes open but apparently they were open. it was absolutely horrible and i was trapped inside my mind alone with this feeling. my body just appeared restless, adjusting to get comfortable and shaking my legs as though i was a bit anxious. but i felt the need to be steamrolled to get rid of this sensation. i needed to scream but nothing would come out. my soul was in pain, but my body felt fine.

anyways, eventually i was discharged home and i have no memory of that journey. i remember taking an ativan in the car, then getting home and going to sleep on the couch. i woke up a few hours later feeling groggy and still jittery/agitated but not nearly the hell that i was in at the ER. that feeling has been lingering but slooooowly tapering out over the last 24 hours. drinking cold water helps, cranking the air conditioner, and laying under a weighted blanket. i ended up googling the meds last night which is how i discovered akathisia and this sub. i decided to talk to my wife about this and actually realized that this symptom is very familiar to them. they have bipolar disorder, and often have episodes of total shutdown where they curl into a ball and just tell me “i need to do everything and nothing and also crawl out of my skin” which i really never recognized the intensity of until now. i cannot imagine feeling this regularly.

so this will be my last time taking droperidol, and probably toradol since that one can apparently contribute to this as well. i’m terrified to take any new meds now. the fact that the bendaryl didn’t touch this feeling is scary to me. ativan was the only thing that finally knocked me out long enough to recover from it. i think i have new layers of trauma from this tbh. what an absolute nightmare. i hope you are all doing alright and finding ways to cope with akathisia.

curious as to what others have to say

my aka began on sunday, i cannot stop moving or walking and the mental distress is unbearable. i have severe flareups where i just writhe on the floor in agony.

i was on pregabalin 50mg twice daily for four years and then tried reducing my dose quite quickly within a week and a half and thats when this began. i do also have chronically low iron but i had an infusion a week ago. ive been taking 75mg a day of pregabalin since just to keep an even dose as suggester by my doctor.

i cant sleep more than an hour, im so exhausted im barely even able to think to type this but i cant stop moving, its like someone is electrocuting me.

is it best to just go back to my normal pregab dose or just stop altogether? i just need anything thatll make this stop. im taking propranolol but the relief is minimal same for things like melatonin for sleep.

please help me

Hi everyone, so two years after a bad reaction to IV Reglan, and a year since another bad reaction to IV droperidol for nausea and vomiting, I'm still suffering from Akathisia which comes in waves and windows but still can be really bad especially in the morning. The last few days I've been stressing out about something out of my control and there's nothing I can really do to stop worrying about it. I think this severe stress made the Akathisia much worse because now in the morning what used to be mild fear and dysphoria when waking up, is now full force. It's not as bad as when the drugs were still in my system, but I'm almost unable to tolerate the feeling these past few days. It's this severe sunken gut, sick to my stomach feeling. Like I need to get up and run away or something or this intense pressure building up inside of me. I haven't been eating much. The last thing I want to do is go to a hospital where they were dismissive of this in the past after giving me these drugs and I went back the following days still freaking out. I also am hesitant to reach out to the psychiatrist I've been seeing for this because I don't feel they understand my situation 100% and are just offering the standard drugs for this like benzos or propranolol which I am too afraid to take, which leads me to the next thing that it's so terrifying that the only drugs that might touch this can make this worse for me in the long run. Just looking for advice or what has helped someone if you were in a situation like mine.

i believe my aka is caused by a sudden lower dose of pregablin that i was on for years, and im wondering if instead of staying on a stable dose i should just look at trying to get off it alltogether. just whatever makes this stop faster

Can akathisia from abilify go away on its own?

Last year I was prescribed Vyvanse and it triggered a 3 month long manic episode and an 8 month long depression which resulted in a hospitalization for suicidality. Ever since my manic episode, I have been experiencing akathisia or some sort of other psychomotor agitation every single day from the moment I wake up to the late afternoon/evening. It subsides as the day goes on.

It is so fucking exhausting to push through that I will try to take mid-day naps so I don’t have to be conscious. Usually it stops after I take a nap.

I get plenty of sleep. I sleep every night for 10+ hours and yet I still wake up tired from managing this. The other week I was at school and I had an online therapist appointment. I slept the whole night, but the restlessness came up in the middle of my appointment, and it was so all consuming that I fell asleep in the middle of the appointment and then proceeded to sleep for another half an hour. The nap didn’t help and I spent the entire class bouncing my leg and swiveling in my chair, fighting to pay attention to anything but this feeling throughout my entire body. There are no cognitive distortions paired with it, and it is entirely physical.

Some days it feels like my entire day was spent just trying to not react to this sensation that I can only describe as doom, agitation, inflammation… I don’t even know. I’m getting so fed up with this. It’s been a fucking year. How can I possibly be a functioning adult when my goal is to be the least conscious as possible so I don’t feel like hot garbage.

Even an objectively good day does nothing. Whether I’m at school, work, or doing fun things it still happens…

I suffered akathisia after I was given Reglan in the ER 2 years ago. The akathisia has mostly subsided since then, but I still suffer many nervous system symptoms.

Today I was just prescribed a z-pack (azithromycin) for an upper respiratory infection. I’m scared this will cause a flare up of akathisia again …

Has anyone taken antibiotics safely after Reglan? If so, which ones?

ive been withdrawing from pregablin from 100mg a day to 50mg a day, and forgot my dose yesterday morning and had only 25mg.
since then ive had a feeling of being unable to stop moving, like i want to just rip out of my skin and be sedated because i cant cope.
if i go back to my normal dose how long for this to go away? and what can i do to make it stop

has anyone developed akathesia from taking estradiol?

so last spring, i started taking latuda, really low dose, because abilify was causing minor weight gain and im vain so i had my psych make the switch lol. what followed was EASILY the worst year of my life. I couldn’t function - left work many times, missed appointments, missed school, couldn’t go in public because at any moment it could start, cancelled a trip with a friend, couldn’t sleep, maybe low key got dépendant on xanax bc it was the only thing that stopped the torture?? I thought that it was restless leg and felt so confused about how a common disorder was so extremely suicide-inducing. like why aren’t people killing themselves more? am i just weak? but i didn’t know it was akathisia until i abruptly stopped taking it after about nine months because it was just so unbearable and i was pretty severely suicidal. afterward my psych very casually said “it was provably akathisia,” she just seemed kind of surprised that it was the latuda and not the abilify. I tried to explain to people how much i was suffering but no one seemed to take it seriously. all i could think to describe it as was restless leg. obviously it was much more serious than that but now that I know what it is, i want to explain to my family and friends that I wasn’t crazy and that it actually was THAT bad. it was nearly daily. I actually can’t understand how I survived on it that long, because I thought about suicide daily and I felt like I was in a prison in my own body. I’m shuddering just thinking about it. please help me describe what happened so that i can justify my misery to everyone. thx

I pace a lot! Especially when I have nothing to do. It’s not the strongest urge to pace as I have experienced before but it is still constant. The catch is I am really benefiting from the meds I am on. So needless to say I don’t want to come off any med to stop the akathisia. I did come off of Risperidone as it made an intense hedge I mean intense urge to pace. To the point I cried and my legs would barely respond. And nothing helped except IV Benadryl in the ER. I paced this way for 23 hours straight non stop! Needless to say the akathisia I have now feels less intense but is still motivating me to pace back and forth. Anyone else here just except their akathisia? Did it lessen over time? How long have you been accepting it? And for what reason have you done so?

First off, some back story:

I got akathisia from every antipsychotic I took until I took Vitamin D3 (prescribed). Then I still had it, but it wasn't so bad. I stopped taking the D3 every day after my levels normalized, because my primary care doctor said it wasn't needed, but I still take the gummies sometimes (maybe twice a week).

I get a shot of antipsychotic every three weeks. My mom, a nurse, gives it to me. She gives it to me because I used to get it at a clinic, and someone there messed up giving it to me, and my hip has hurt off and on in that spot ever since; it hurt for three weeks straight right after. (The nurse was fired right after giving me the shot, and I suspect there's something they're not telling me. Anyway...)

Up until two days ago, I knew this much was true: Chamomile tea helps with akathisia when I still get it. So do magnesium gummies. So did the D3, and it went away completely after I took Life Extension's Cytokine Suppress, which has mung bean (coat) extract and EGCG.

But the Cytokine Suppress made my hip hurt more, where I got the funky shot. I was scared there was some sort of an infection in there that I needed extra ooomph in my immune system for. So after two weeks of taking it, I stopped the Cytokine Suppress.

Five days ago, my mom gave me the shot.

Four days ago, my akathisia was back, almost (but not quite) to levels like I used to get before the D3. I was pacing, I was sitting and rocking, you know the drill. I took some leftover liver detox pills that I had every day for a couple of days, but they didn't seem to help. I think either I was low on D3, or the Cytokine Suppress had worn off, and/or something happened when my mom gave me the shot.

I was broke. Two days ago, when I could afford the magnesium gummies again, I took four. Then I took four more, reaching the upper limit of what they say people can take daily of magnesium. And the akathisia was still there. Full force.

I had some chamomile tea. It helped a little. But it was a bad night.

Desperate, I took a Cytokine Suppress pill. It had taken weeks to work before, but I figured one pill wouldn't hurt. And for the heck of it, I took a couple of Nature's Truth Turmeric, Curcumin, and Ginger gummies, because they made me dizzy the last time I took them and it was late at night at this point and I wanted to SLEEP.

They didn't make me dizzy, but I did eventually fall asleep. And, when I woke up, the akathisia was gone. I feel a twinge occasionally, but it hasn't come back.

I don't know what did it, but the only things I did differently were the Nature's Truth gummies (which did NOT make me dizzy this time), the Cytokine Suppress, the chamomile, and I guess the magnesium. So I'm posting this here because, well, I want to see if someone else who is desperate gets the same result. Do NOT take eight magnesium gummies, they've been making me pee every 30 minutes for the past day or so, which can happen with high doses. I don't think it was them that helped anyway, because when they helped before it was immediate, and I'm pretty sure they never made it go away completely, and certainly not that dramatically.

TL;DR: Akathisia came back. One pill of Cytokine Suppress, chamomile tea, magnesium gummies, and Nature's Truth turmeric, curcumin and ginger gummies made it go away when I could afford to take them after days of (almost) torture. Some combination of those might help you. Try it without the magnesium first.

Hello everyone. I am making this post in a very dark and desperate place. I am a 24-year-old male who, a little over a week ago, received an IV infusion of Compazine (prochlorperazine) while in the ER for an intense headache. I have a history of Tourette's disorder and restless legs syndrome, but neither of them were particularly severe or disabling at the time. As most of you can imagine, I very quickly developed intense symptoms of what I now know to be akathisia. The most immediate symptom was restless legs, very intense, but also an intense and overwhelming feeling of dysphoria. Now I have actually experienced something like this before (nowhere near the intensity), over a decade ago when I was given Zoloft (sertraline) as a child. I ceased taking that medication and was back to normal before too long (but not immediately). Although the sensation was intensely negative I was not too concerned about it because I thought it was a temporary effect of the medication. I asked the nurse to disconnect the IV before it finished (it was a drip) and discharged myself. I went home and fell asleep; I don't know how, I was probably just exhausted. I woke up the next day back to normal. There was nothing wrong with me and I was relieved the experience was over. I then went to bed that night as normal. I woke up the next morning. I immediately knew something was wrong. The dysphoria was back, even more intense and so were the restless legs. In addition I was sweating all over and I had the sensation of bugs crawling up and down my arms, all over my skin. I won't bother describing it in more detail since if you are browsing this subreddit you likely have first-hand experience. Suffice to say it is by far the worst feeling I have ever experienced in my life. I paced all that day and night and did not sleep. I paced the following day and rocked back and forth in bed that night. It got so intense I decided I would admit myself to a mental hospital in order to stop me harming myself, but all of a sudden, as it reached its maximum intensity, the restlessness subsided. I was able to lie down and sleep. However, at no point did the mental dysphoria subside, only the physical agitation. The restlessness came back the next day. The following day it was better, the day after worse. As I am typing this, 9 days since the infusion, the restlessness and sweating have subsided greatly, but the mental distress has not. I have been spending time while I can reading others' experiences on this subreddit and elsewhere. I am very concerned about my prognosis. I have read countless experiences of people who have had bad acute reactions similar to mine, but those have mostly subsided after 48 hours, once the medication has left the body. Of those people who have persistent symptoms, a frightening degree of them appear to have them permanently. As it currently stands I have complete anhedonia. I cannot enjoy anything, food, music, television, surfing the internet, anything. The actual restlessness has subsided slightly but there is just an emptiness in its place. I am looking for any reassurance or hope from anyone who has had a similar experience, particularly if you:

• had akathisia and extreme restless legs with dysphoria after a single infusion of an anti-emetic
• particularly if you received Compazine because I have read recovery stories, but they are mostly from drugs such as Reglan and Droperidol which I understand are less intense antipsychotics
• had akathisia come on or come back after an initial period of relief (as in the medication wore off and then the akathisia came back)
• had anhedonia that lessened after the physical symptoms lessened
• has sweating or the sensation of bugs crawling (formication)
• had a "windows and waves" pattern
• had any kind of "depersonalization" (I have the sensation that I am a changed person in some way and it is unpleasant, although it is not as intense as some accounts I have read)

Thank you so much in advance to anyone who chooses to reply, no matter what you have to say.

For me mild to moderate akathisia feels different from severe akathisia. With severe akathisia my brain feels like it has been switched on. Like an episode begins. And after it is over it feels like you snap out of it. Whereas with mild to moderate I feel fine just want to pace for instance. I’ve had both severe acute onset akathisia where I paced for 23 hours straight. I get a feeling in my head when the severe episode is over. Anyone else experience the feeling I described?

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> I've been off the antipsychotic medication that caused my akathisia from 3 years. At the same time, it also caused severe anhedonia. I no longer feel pleasure from movies, TV shows, music, or anything else. The akathisia went away after about 3 months, but the anhedonia has never improved.

I also have chronic insomnia. I wake up at least three times every night, and I've been struggling with concentration and cognitive issues as well.

Has anyone else experienced something similar? Did anyone recover from this after several years?