3 ms·

The annoying thing about (for example) SSRIs is that it's annoying to take accurate doses like that. My escitalopram comes in 5mg, 10mg and 20mg. If I want to

The annoying thing about (for example) SSRIs is that it's annoying to take accurate doses like that. My escitalopram comes in 5mg, 10mg and 20mg. If I want to slowly taper down from 20mg a day, I have to start chopping off bits from an already tiny pill every day for months on end. I can't just drop down to 15mg a day, it's too abrupt.

saurik 11y ago
Maybe it would be simpler to grind the pills into a more easily-measurable powder and put it into your own empty capsules?
- mrsteveman1 11y ago
  A lot of people take them to a compounding pharmacy and have a solution made out of them, making it easier to measure specific amounts.
jackfrodo 11y ago
I'm on 20mg of escitalopram as well. If you don't mind me asking, why are you wanting to taper down? Is this recommended by your doctor?
- lololomg 11y ago
  No I don't want to taper down. I've tried that and decided that it's not worth it for me. I'll probably take them till the day I die. There's almost no side effects and I function so much better on them. Why stop?
biturd 11y ago
Worse, keep in mind that pill, broke perfect in half, will not have equal amounts of the active or inactive ingredients in each side. Further, if it is a generic, it doesn't even have to have the same mg amount of the active ingredient, only within a margin of something like 90%, which is huge when dealing with these types of meds.
- ZeroGravitas 11y ago
  Why does the error margin only apply to generic medicines? Surely all pills have the same manufacturing issues and legal tolerances?
  - thatcat 11y ago
    Presumably because patented drugs don't have any bioequivalent drugs to compare to and the margin of error is based off of how different the generic is from the original. Originals do have stricter regulations on the amounts of inactive fillers used though. > Most regulators worldwide have decided that a 20% variation is generally not clinically significant. >Two versions of a drug are generally said to be bioequivalent if the 90% confidence intervals for the ratios of the geometric means (brand vs. generic) of the AUC and Cmax fall within 80% and 125%. The tmax (brand vs. generic) must also be comparable — and there should not be any significant differences between different patients. [1]https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/generic-drugs-are-they-equivalent/ https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/generic-drugs-are-they-... [2](cmax, auc, graph comparison) http://www.bpac.org.nz/BPJ/2007/March/bioequiv.aspx http://www.bpac.org.nz/BPJ/2007/March/bioequiv.aspx

saurik 11y ago

Maybe it would be simpler to grind the pills into a more easily-measurable powder and put it into your own empty capsules?

mrsteveman1 11y ago
A lot of people take them to a compounding pharmacy and have a solution made out of them, making it easier to measure specific amounts.

jackfrodo 11y ago

I'm on 20mg of escitalopram as well. If you don't mind me asking, why are you wanting to taper down? Is this recommended by your doctor?

lololomg 11y ago
No I don't want to taper down. I've tried that and decided that it's not worth it for me. I'll probably take them till the day I die. There's almost no side effects and I function so much better on them. Why stop?

biturd 11y ago

Worse, keep in mind that pill, broke perfect in half, will not have equal amounts of the active or inactive ingredients in each side. Further, if it is a generic, it doesn't even have to have the same mg amount of the active ingredient, only within a margin of something like 90%, which is huge when dealing with these types of meds.

ZeroGravitas 11y ago
Why does the error margin only apply to generic medicines? Surely all pills have the same manufacturing issues and legal tolerances?
- thatcat 11y ago
  Presumably because patented drugs don't have any bioequivalent drugs to compare to and the margin of error is based off of how different the generic is from the original. Originals do have stricter regulations on the amounts of inactive fillers used though. > Most regulators worldwide have decided that a 20% variation is generally not clinically significant. >Two versions of a drug are generally said to be bioequivalent if the 90% confidence intervals for the ratios of the geometric means (brand vs. generic) of the AUC and Cmax fall within 80% and 125%. The tmax (brand vs. generic) must also be comparable — and there should not be any significant differences between different patients. [1]https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/generic-drugs-are-they-equivalent/ https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/generic-drugs-are-they-... [2](cmax, auc, graph comparison) http://www.bpac.org.nz/BPJ/2007/March/bioequiv.aspx http://www.bpac.org.nz/BPJ/2007/March/bioequiv.aspx