A Shade of Sleep

Hello all! I apologize for the inconsistent posts as I’ve been feeling rather depressed recently, but I hope to make more posts here.

I took a lot of different medications before my narcolepsy diagnosis especially for my bipolar disorder. To name one, I took hydroxizine largely for sleep. Although hydroxizine was supposed to be used for my anxiety, my psychiatrist prescribed a higher dose to help me sleep better. However, it did little to help me fall and stay asleep. I took around 200 mg of hydroxizine every night, and it seemed to do nothing for me. I’m not quite sure how hydroxizine works, but I know I’m not supposed to take it near when I take my lumryz, so it supposedly has some sedating effects, which I can confirm because I took 10 mg in the morning for anxiety.

I also took 80 mg of Latuda and 50 mg of Lamictal/lamotrigine. The high dosage of latuda seemed to be helping me for a while until I actually was diagnosed with narcolepsy and got medicated. It was especially apparent that I needed to come off of the Latuda when I started experiencing tardive dyskinesia symptoms. We started the taper around 6 months ago, and I’ve been coming down on it ever since.

The lamictal/lamotrigine has always helped me and I haven’t experienced any side effects from it. As I’ve gone down on the Latuda, I’ve gone up on the Lamictal. This has been within the past six months, but I was diagnosed with narcolepsy roughly two years ago. My medication for my bipolar remained pretty stable when I wasn’t diagnosed with narcolepsy, but after I was it called for a couple changes.

One medication that I take that doesn’t affect my narcolepsy whatsoever is birth control, which is pretty self explanatory.

I actually take another controlled substance to mask my tardive dyskinesia symptoms, and it’s called Ingrezza. I wasn’t prescribed this until around March of 2026, to which my parents had to fight for it because it wasn’t approved for patients under 18 years old. As I mentioned in another post, the interaction between my Lumryz and Latuda caused me to develop tardive dyskinesia, so at this time I was diagnosed with narcolepsy.

So before I was diagnosed with narcolepsy, I took Latuda, Lamictal, Gallifrey, and Hydroxizine.

After being diagnosed, we’re currently tapering me off of the Latuda, increasing the Lamictal, keeping the gallifrey, omitting the hydroxizine, and adding on the Lumryz and Ingrezza. Additionally, I have recently been prescribed propranolol to assist with my anxiety, but that’s unrelated to my sleep meds.

I’m interested to know what other conditions narcoleptics deal with besides narcolepsy. I know that we are at a higher risk of having/developing bipolar disorder, which is an interesting combination. I wonder if there’s another person out there like me who experiences narcolepsy and tardive dyskinesia! I guess I can only find out with the more narcoleptics I reach out to.

Thanks for reading! August 2nd, 2026.