Has anyone successfully withdrawn from Abilify?

Hi, I am on 30mgs per day.

I cannot even imagine trying to come off.

The only thing I can say is ask your provider if there is something you can take that will ease the symptoms, don't suffer.

About seven or eight weeks ago, I quit a combination of Abilify and Effexor in a moment of near-suicidal rage. I'm diagnosed bipolar 2, and there's some evidence that Effexor can lead to rapid cycling with this condition. Apparently this is what it did to me. I was in a depressive cycle when I acted rashly. But I also genuinely feel both drugs were making me worse. So my experience was coming off both at once, cold turkey. I cannot entirely say what aspects of my withdrawal (which lasted about a month) were caused by Effexor (which is a monster to quit), and what parts of were me coming off of Abilfy. But the Abilify had stripped me of my personality. Even my psychiatrist, the last time I saw her before abruptly quitting both drugs, sounded ready to take me off of it because I'd become such a zombie. It's a problematic drug. It definitely stabilized me right when I needed it, so I'm not exactly against it. But a few months on it were pretty detrimental to my state of mind. Even my wife told me I wasn't myself anymore. I was just walking around in a haze.

I've been off both drugs for nearly eight weeks now. I do feel like I have my personality back (and that loss was definitely Abilify, as soon as I went on it last fall I began going flat), but I don't advise quitting like I did. It's not medically advised and it wasn't fun (I'm pretty belligerent when I want to do something, which is why I was able to ride it out). I do wish doctors would do a better job of telling patients what they can expect if they go off a drug. I was never told what would happen with either. The Effexor had been prescribed long ago by a different doctor, so it was a legacy drug after my fairly recent diagnosis. My psychiatrist added Abilify to the mix, but I didn't really know the side effects. She did a better job of explaining the good and bad on the one she put me on about five weeks ago, which is a different class of pharmaceutical entirely. I wasn't ready to be medication-free, but this time I felt I made an informed choice. Whatever drug they're giving you, be sure to ask about what happens if you need to quit it. Because this is a game of trial and error, and you might need to get off the drug (as happened to you with Abilify). So you want to be sure going in that it's a good idea. It's hard and discouraging sometimes, but you have to advocate for yourself. That's the system, unfortunately.

I hope you're able to see the other side of this. It can be miserable.

I was on 2mg Abilify for about 15 days and then tapered off half-dose for 9 days. I have now been completely off of Abilify for 16 days and still feeling loads of anxiety. I have been saddened and horrified by reading about people's anguish. 3 days of my anxiety were of intense depression. Otherwise lots of anxiety and don't know if it's still withdrawal or when I will be free. If anyone has any words of advice or hope...please let me know.

I was put on abilify when I was 21, but had had psychosis symtpoms as early as 17 y.o. I was on it for close to 25 years, with varying doses, typically 10 or 15 m.g. a day.

I was having terrible symptoms ( major depressive ones) that affected my life so much, that I started tapering in March of 2025. I was only on 5 m.g. a day at that time, but had been on for 25 years. I didn't know what to expect, but to me, there was no other choice.

Initial withdrawal symptoms were terrible after about 3 weeks in. I had insomnia for over 3 months, a constant headache for 2 months (and I had never gotten headaches before), long spats of lightheadedness and nausea, uncontrollable aggressiveness at times, intense irritability, so many things.

To be safe and to guard against any psychosis symptoms coming back, I tapered VERY gradually, either .5 - 1 m.g. every 2 - 3 months, and by early February this year, have been off.

It's been one of the most difficult things to deal with in my adult life. Second after dealing with very strong psychosis symptoms from my mental illness since my late teens and early to mid 20s.

My advice would be to try every thing you can to be healthy. Exercise regularly (intense exercise for 40-45 minutes a day), getting as much sleep as you can (this last month I gave finally gotten uninterrupted sleep), and maintaining a healthy diet are huge.

That said, I'm still dealing with a lot of irritability and sometimes aggressive behavior more than a year later. The upside is that, after tapering, my emotions came back, my energy came back, I did a 180 degree turn in my outlook, I have unlimited motivation, I can feel, think, and even see better.

I was one who had many negative effects from this drug, unfortunately, but it wasn't until coming off of it that I now know that the drug caused a lot of it. Whole new life. It's hard, and if you're in a position like I was, work with your doctor and go as slow as you need to, focus on yourself in all the ways you can get healthy, and it'll get better.

Worried that it may take much more time than I thought to be free of everything, but I'm positive and there's no comparison to what I was a little over a year ago until now.

@lucasl1 - this is really encouraging for those who are in a position where they need to taper off of aripiprazole (Abilify).

Thank you, and welcome to Mayo Clinic Connect. I know that members here always appreciate hearing bits of good news - whether that be good news about a treatment that worked well for them, or getting successfully off of a treatment that was not a fit and is hard to taper off of.

So, was the diagnosis for which you were put on this medication psychosis alone, or was there another diagnosis, as well? Is your doctor putting you on another medication instead, or how is your treatment being managed now?

Well, I was put on lamotrigine somewhat in tandem with abilify if I remember right. After I dropped out of college cuz I couldn't everything on my own (I never told anyone anything for a couple years, just thought I could get over it), when I got home they put me on different types of very strong seizure medications, probably based on data where my brain was hooked up to electrodes on my scalp for a week and monitored me and given some of my symptoms up to that point. These meds were very hard on me and knocked me out, and didn't feel like they did anything anyways helpful. So I did stop them and hope that my symptoms would go away (which were triggered by what I now believe to be like partial focal seizures, where when I had one the first time during a college presentation for my architecture program I blacked out and woke up in from of the room and didn't know where I was). But I had been having psychosis symptoms before that, about 17. When I was 2 y.o. I caught viral encephalitis, and was in the hospital for a week with a 108 degree temperature. I only found out a couple years ago from my parents that afteer that, I had to learn to walk and talk again, which took a couple years. Everything seemed to work out though and did really good in school until high school. And to be perfectly honest, another trigger was drugs at that time (most likely an instigator being pot) that could have triggered some things at that point.

Anyways, that fall after I came off of the antiseizure medication and was off everything, I went back to college, but my symptoms came back soon. I found a psychiatrist and believed at that point diagnosed me as schizophrenic (but don't know which exact flavor). He put me on risperdal but I really hated it, and the way he spoke to me and the things he said made me ashamed of myself. So I didn't trust him and as that medication deadened my emotions and didn't help in any way I would have really hoped, went back somewhat to drugs (not pot) but just mostly alcohol for a few months. By that fall alcohol wasn't even helping that much, and I can'tremember taking risperdal anymore then but I do know that summer I wasn' taking it consistently. My brain was mush and couldn't keep a thought in my head. But I really knew something was wrong after doing a bunch of cocaine one night (which I did not do often) and did not feel a thing from a lot of alcohol I was drinking or from it. Then I figured, well, I can't even get a break/escape from this from drugs anymore, so it's time to see a real specialist.

That's when I met the doc that prescribed me the lamictal and ariprazole, and from what zi remember the doc said that, perhaps due to a weakened brain or whatever from the encephalitis and my drug use in my teens, what was happening was a sort of "kindling", which at that time made perfect sense given what I had experienced up to that point. Kindling meaning these seizure type things (neurological episodes) happen, and then happen more frequently, and then they're just there which when I would have them would have their own, separate effects I felt on my brain along with the psychosis symptoms I was having (some due to perhaps drug use), and ones that were there even without these type of partial type seizures or whatever they are. But this diagnosis matched mostly of what had happened so far with me.

So, to answer your question, I am still on the lamictal. When I spoke with the doctor initially. He asked me which one I thought I should go off. For the coule years before that, I had tried everything, but I felt this hole in me getting larger and larger and my soul being ripped from inside. A feeling that I first noticed in 2014, but kept growing and growing since then, and by mid 2023 really flattened me. No energy. No emotion. No ambition. No motivation. At that point had a 1 and 2.5 year old kids I was working with. And and older one, so I chalked it up to I just hit a wall since I had been burning the candle from both ends for so long. But midsummer 2023, my motivation or anything else did not come back. I tried everything from getting in intense exercise classes, eating better, everything. With bmvery limited success.

So by the time early 2025 came around I thought, we'll, maybe it could be one of the meds I'm on and it's side effects. So the doc asked which one, and so given my history I believe the more principal, underlying thing that's causing most my distress was the seizure type activity, and from there most other things happened, which the antpsuchotic was probably helping with. It would be helpful to know as well that for the last couple of years before 2023, the vast majority of my really bad psychosis symptoms had dissipated, and the depression was really the bad thing.

So the question I thought was funny. And I told the doc, well, you're the doctor, I was hoping you would tell me. He shrugged his shoulders. But based on my history and what I felt was helping me more given whatever condition I have and what has helped me, the abilify seemed the right way to go.

So I asked where do we go from here? I was on a lower dose at that time (which he stated was "untherapeutic" anyways) so he said go down to 2.5 for a couple weeks. And if you feel okay, you can go off. Then my story above.

After three weeks I couldn't take a lot of the withdrawal symptoms. And was considering like some type of recovery place where you can relax and and have no stress, etc. While you get better. Problem is they are expensive, and I have to provide for my three kids and keep working. So I started doing reaearch into stuff online, both personal accounts on things like reddit and reading medical journals that talked a little about so.e recent research and how to come off of abilify or other second gen antipsychotics. And what I started finding were horror stories from people who had only been on for some weeks or a month, and withdrawal the symptoms were still following them. Needless to say, I never talked to that guy again. I emailed my original specialist from 2001-2008 who I had trusted more than aby other pyschiatrist in my life. He had stopped practicing at the clinic I went to but led me back there to it and facilitated my way back in. And that's when the more professionally guided tapering started.

P.S. I believe my diagnosis I have been under for some time has been bipolar schizoaffective disorder. (But I've never had a manic episode in any type of sense throughout my life.)

-- This might have been a longer story than you'd expect. And believe me theres much, much, much more to talk about.

Yep, my intention is to help people now with things I have learned. Like self-help stuff to grow, give confidence, believe all while you work through all the stages for things like these.