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Zyprexa Side Effects  How to Take Zyprexa  How Zyprexa Works & Compares with Other Meds  Comments  Where to Buy Zyprexa / Ratings

 

 

 

 

 

US Brand Name: Zyprexa
A link here will take you to the official website for the drug.

Other Brand Names: Dozic (Colombia)
Olansek (Austria; Belgium; Bulgaria; Czech Republic; Denmark;  Finland; France; Germany; Greece; Hungary; Ireland; Italy; Netherlands; Norway; Poland; Portugal; Russia; Slovenia; Spain; Sweden; Switzerland; Turkey; United Kingdom), although this brand name is going out of fashion in most European countries.
Oleanz (India)
Zelta (Colombia)
Zyprexa Velotab (Austria; Belgium; Bulgaria; Czech Republic; Denmark;  Finland; France; Germany; Greece; Hungary; Ireland; Italy; Netherlands; Norway; Poland; Portugal; Russia; Slovenia; Spain; Sweden; Switzerland; Turkey; United Kingdom)
Zyprexa Zydis (New Zealand)
Зипрекса / Zyprexa (In areas where the Cyrillic alphabet is in use, such as Russia)
זיפרקסה  / Zyprexa (Israel)
ジプレキサ / Zyprexa (Japan)

Generic Name: olanzapine

What is Zyprexa: Zyprexa is an Antipsychotic, specifically an atypical antipsychotic
Read up on these sections if you haven't done so already, because they cover a lot of information about multiple medications that I'm not going to repeat on many pages.  I'm just autistic that way about not repeating myself.

Other Forms: Orally disintegrating tablets (Zydis), intramuscular injection.  Mixed with Prozac (fluoxetine) to form Symbyax.

What are the FDA Approved Uses of Zyprexa. Zyprexa is approved to treat:

  • Schizophrenia (two-year double-blind study vs. Haldol (haloperidol)) - approved September 1996. 
  • Bipolar mania (47-week double-blind clinical trial vs. Depakote (divalproex sodium)) - approved 10 July 2003 for acute bipolar mania.  Those are what I mean by a freaking clinical trials and follow-up studies!  None of that 6 to 8-week comparison with a placebo bullshit that everyone else does. 
  • On 14 January 2004 Zyprexa joined lithium as only the second medication with approval to treat chronic (that is long-term) bipolar mania. Lithium and Zyprexa (olanzapine) are currently the only drugs specifically approved for long-term treatment of bipolar disorder.  All the others are approved only for short-term treatments.  And while those of us in the bipolar spectrum have to keep taking meds forever, many of the anticonvulsants don't have the same long-term consequences of either drug with long-term approval.  Funny that.
  • Zyprexa is also approved to be used in combination with lithium and Depakote (divalproex sodium) to treat bipolar mania.  

What are Some of the Off-Label Uses of Zyprexa. Additionally Zyprexa is also prescribed to treat:

 

 

Zyprexa's pros and cons:

Pros: There is no better medication if you or a loved one are in some kind of mental health crisis!  Seriously, if someone is flipping out due to schizophrenia, some form of bipolar mania or several other flip-outs, Zyprexa (olanzapine) is just the thing to calm them the hell down right now and let them think straight about long-term treatment options.  Maybe it will be part of their long-term med cocktail, maybe not, but until you can think straight in the first place, you can't make any long-term decisions.  Fast-acting and effective, it's great to have in the medicine cabinet for bipolar emergencies.  When combined with the right antidepressant, it could be just the thing to conquer that treatment-resistant depression that nothing else will deal with.

 

Cons: Along with Effexor (venlafaxine) and Depakote (divalproex sodium) this is a med that everyone loves to hate.  You'll gain five pounds (two kilograms) just by filling the prescription.  You'll sleep 10-16 hours a day.  You won't care about anything.  You might come down with type 2 diabetes.  But all of these things are probably going to be issues if you take Zyprexa (olanzapine) at medium-to-high dosages for a long time.  Except for the sleeping and not caring, you'll feel like that the first time you take the med, but those eventually wear off.  Usually.    

 

 

 

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Take care, and keep taking your crazy meds!

 

If you still have unanswered questions about this or other medications, including which one is, or combination of meds are the best for you, your best bet is to ask on Crazy Meds Talk.  Better yet, if you want to let the world know how they worked out for you and want to help out others in their quest for the correct meds, join the party.
If you 
want to discuss your issues, I suggest checking out one of the various support groups online.  
Otherwise, if you're letting me know about how much you like or hate the site, or  need to let me know about medication effects in private, then just drop a note to jerod23 at gmail dot com  Honestly, I usually don't have a lot of time to answer e-mail these days.  The snide autoresponse message that may or may not hit your mailbox is going to tell you the same thing.
Another problem is that you may not get a response even if I wanted to send you one.  You see, so many dickweeds with malicious intents and too much time on their hands have appropriated the crazymeds.org domain name to use for their spam, viruses and the like.  Subsequently some lazy-ass e-mail protection software authors just go by the domain name, and not the IP address.  So I've been blacklisted because of the actions of others.  Or the software just doesn't like the domain name because of the "crazy" and/or "meds."  Or your question about a particular medication will set off spam flags.  So the e-mail just wouldn't go through regardless.  Sorry.

  

Hey, did you find this page all by itself through Google or some other search engine? Great! But to really appreciate the entire site, you need to start here.

 

 

Dead tree references:

 

 

Instant Psychopharmacology 2nd Edition Ronald J. Diamond M.D. © 2002. Published by W.W. Norton

 

 

Essential Psychopharmacology Stephen M. Stahl, M.D., Ph. D. © 2000.   Published by  Cambridge University Press

 

A Primer of Drug Action Robert M. Julien, M.D., Ph. D. © 2001.  We use the Ninth Edition.  Sometimes that comes up on an Amazon search, usually it doesn't.  Published by  Worth Publishers

 

 

Physicians' Desk Reference Editions 53 & 56 Maria Deutsch & Anu Gupta, Drug Information Specialists, et al. ©  1999, 2002. Published by Medical Economics Company.

 

The Complete Guide to Psychiatric Drugs Edward Drummond, M.D. © 2000. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

 

 

Mosby's 2004 Drug Guide David Nissen PharmD, Editor.© 2004.  An imprint of Elsevier.  The edition we're using isn't listed on Amazon.

 

 

End of books used for this article.

 

 

Created Friday, December 26, 2003

Last updated Monday, May 24, 2010

 

Copyright © 2003 - 2006 Jerod Poore. All rights reserved.

 

Almost all of the material on this site is copyright © 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 Jerod Poore. Except, of course, the PI sheets, those are the property of the drug companies who developed the drugs the sheets are about.  And any documents that are written by other people which may be posted to this site will remain the property of the original authors.  You cannot reproduce this page or any other material on this site outside of the boundaries of fair use copying without the express permission of the copyright holder.  That's usually me, so just ask first.  That means if want to print out a few pages to take to your doctor, therapist, counselor, support group, non-understanding family members or something like that - then that's OK to just do.  Go for it!  Please.  As long as you include this copyright notice and the following disclaimer, I'm cool with it.

All rights reserved. No warranty is expressed or implied in this information. Consult one or more doctors and pharmacists before taking, or changing how you take any neurological and/or psychiatric medication. Your mileage may vary. What happened to us won't necessarily happen to you. Nobody on this site is a doctor, therapist, or a pharmacist. We don't portray them either here or on TV. Only doctors can diagnose and treat an illness. Some doctors tend to get pissed off by patients who know too much about medications, so tread lightly when and where appropriate. Diagnosing yourself from a website is like defending yourself in court, you suddenly have a fool for a doctor. Don't be a cyberchondriac, thinking you have every disease you see a website about, or that you'll get every side effect from every medication. Self-prescribing is just as dangerous.  All information on this site has been obtained through personal experience, the experiences of my friends, the experiences of people reported on online support groups, and from sources that are referenced throughout the site.  Know your sources!  As such the information presented here is not a substitute for real medical advice from your real doctor, just a compliment to it.  No neurologists, psychiatrists, therapists or pharmacists were harmed in the production of this website. All brand names of the drugs listed in this site are the trademarks of the companies listed after them in the pages about the drugs, even though those companies may or may not have been acquired by other companies who may or may not be listed in this site by the time you read this. Always read the PI sheet that comes with your medications and never ever throw them away.  If you didn't get a PI sheet, demand one.  Loudly.  Crazy Meds is not responsible for the content of sites we provide links to.  We like them, or they're paid advertisements, or they're something you should read to make an informed decision about a particular med.  Sometimes they're more than one of those things.  But what's on those sites is their business, not ours.  Very little information about visitors to this site is collected or saved. And from time to time I do look at search terms used to find it in an effort to make the information I present more relevant. Use only as directed. Void where prohibited.

 

"Everything is true, nothing is permitted." - Jerod Poore