I took my Abilify this morning as we were headed out the door to go vote early. I'm scheduled to work all day on election day and my husband will want to come home from work and sleep, so we decided to go today.

Lessons Learned from Today about Abilify~

1. Do NOT take on an empty or somewhat empty stomach. Standing in the voting line I thought I was going to toss my cookies the whole time.

2. In about 90 minutes from ingestion you WILL badly need to go to sleep. Be prepared for this.

3. You may sleep all day long.

4. It causes headaches (at least at the beginning) so carry tylenol/ibuprofen with you.

5. Irritability level goes way up ~ when feeling like lashing out go find quiet alone space.

*Note: It does help, but a little overwhelmed by the side effects at the moment. I'm going to switch to taking it in the early evenings instead of first thing in the morning. I don't care if I'm exhausted then~ maybe I'll actually sleep through the whole night!

So since I slept last night and all day yesterday I'm now awake at 3:30 a.m. andI'm not sure ifI'm going to get back to sleep or not. And I'm munching on Halloween candy that we bought for trick-or-treaters that never came plus drinking a soda, so the odds of me going back to sleep are pretty low considering my sugar intake right now.I know I need to be careful, this is what they consider a "weight positive" drug (makes people gain weight), but I feel awake for the first time in 18 hours or more, and I found that the Abilify actually kills my apetite. I'll still take it easy though.

So other than voting I got nothing else done, but I'm glad I managed that. We waited in line for about an hour this time; not bad. 4 years ago I had to try twice~ the first time I waited for 2 and a 1/2 hours before I had to leave to pick up my son, and the second time my Mom and I stood in the rain for 4 hours before we got to vote.

Not sure what this weekend will bring, but hopefully the side effects will ease off and leave me feeling better one day at a time.

I feel so selfish blogging about my problems when I know so many people here and everywhere else have issues that make mine look small.But I guess the reality is that regardless, we need to take care of ourselves as best we can and in situations like this ~ talking about it. So thanks for reading and helping me begin my recovery process. 🙂

Best wishes and warm thoughts ~ Key