Mirtazipine

Prescription Mirtazipine Drug Information

Common side effects of mirtazapine include drowsiness, sedation, malaise/lassitude, dry mouth, dizziness, increased appetite, and weight gain. Less common side effects include agitation, aggression, rash, restless legs syndrome (RLS), strange, vivid, and even lucid dreams, and weak psychedelic effects, including auditory and visual hallucinations.^[52][53][54] Most of these side effects are generally mild and become less prominent with consistent dosing over time Rare and serious side effects may include facial edema, allergic reaction, bone marrow toxicity, myelodysplasia, syncope, seizures, and agranulocytosis (occurs in 1/1,000 patients) Mirtazapine does not cause most of the side effects encountered with the SSRIs and related drugs such as sexual dysfunction, insomnia, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, urinary retention, mydriasis, bruxism, cognitive/memory impairment, and/or emotional blunting (apathy/anhedonia), nor does it have the capacity to exacerbate a patient's depressive/anxious symptoms or cause suicidal ideation.

Psychedelia

Mirtazapine has mild psychedelic effects which are occasionally encountered by some of its patients. Reports include vivid, bizarre, or even lucid dreams, and auditory and visual hallucinations. These effects tend to be most prominent upon first commencing treatment and usually dissipate with time. They are especially prominent when mirtazapine is taken acutely, taken at high doses, or mixed with cannabis. Because of these properties, mirtazapine has seen a miniscule degree of recreational use, though most of the people that abuse it find the experience unpleasant on account of mirtazapine's lack of relative positive euphoria, strong sedating effects, and tendency to induce restless legs syndrome (RLS) at higher doses.