I've been on Seroquel for about 8 months, it has been life-changing for me--but the side effects have been... unpleasant.
When it kicks in (I take it at night), I get tachycardia for about a half an hour and also restless leg syndrome, and if I've fallen asleep before it kicks in, I jar immediately awake when it does kick in with the terrifying feeling that "so this is it, I'm going to die", usually shrieking aloud in absolute fear and scrambling to grab my phone in case I really do need to dial 911 (this happens about 3-4 times a week)--and for the past month I've been having horrible nightmares every night--I'll be hopefully trying something else come this Friday, probably Zyprexa or one of the others that help people with autism that don't decrease appetite (when I have medications that decrease appetite, I'll forget to eat and have passing-out spells--I'd rather be fat than malnourished).
If I took Seroquel during the day it would make things difficult, and it has given me some irritability issues that I've had to conquer--it's so easy to fly off the handle at the smallest of things. However, normally my mind races all the time about thousands of things that don't really matter most of the time and it slows that down to a level that is much more sustainable and lets me live much closer to "normal". There are still times when I sort-of relapse back to what happened to me so often before I found Seroquel, where I think too much about conflicting things in my head after something I couldn't pre-plan occurs and I have a short circuit, so-to-speak, where I can't talk (to where the speech part of my brain just won't work right--nor can I walk or anything else) and tears stream out of being completely helpless at that moment and people and my surroundings become the same thing as watching a movie or reading a book, and then there are other times where things that aren't important become a total emergency until it can be sorted played through in my head from about 100 angles, but it happens so much *less* than it did before I found Seroquel, it's just an amazing change. I really don't want to switch medications because I *know* that Seroquel works, but this complete terror I feel at those times shortly after I take it, as well as the constant nightmares I've had recently, is just not something I feel I can take anymore.
It took me a while to adjust to getting up feeling groggy and I had very little energy until the middle of the day--HAD, I've mostly adjusted to it now, but would still not be able to function if I took it during the day. The thing that Zyprexa doesn't have a history of tachycardia. When the tachycardia and restless leg hits me hard, it is absolutely terrifying to me, particularly if I get woken up by it--it gives me the worst panic during those times (usually for about a half an hour) that I've ever experienced. The feeling of "omg, I'm about to die!" and having your whole life flash before you like someone has pointed a loaded gun at your head and is ready to pull the trigger several times a week is just not pleasant. It's absolutely terrifying.
