amitriptyline?

My GI prescribed this for me a couple of weeks ago to see if it would help with my pain management and diarrhea while he tries to figure out exactly what it wrong with me. Anyway, I've been having some really crazy side effects from it- VERY vivid hallucinations in the evening (people calling my name, music), nightmares, I can't sleep for 2 hours before waking up, I'm very angry and depressed during the day...I'm only on 5 mg at the moment! Meanwhile, my abdominal pain has been nearly unbearable, the only thing that has been helping is vicodin. I've had 2 partial obstructions that have cleared on their own just during the last 2 weeks.

Has anyone else taken this? I'm going to stop, I can't handle feeling like this mentally. I'm just afraid my doctor won't understand and he'll try to push me to keep taking it. :(

I have been on it twice. Only because I forgot what happened the first time, so I stupidly took it again a few years later. I didn't have trouble during the day like you describe. But I had horrible trouble at night. I had vivid nightmares when I could sleep but I couldn't sleep most of the time, it was just awful. I will never take it again. It is suppose to make you drowsy, but has the exact opposite effect on me, any you apparently. You should call your doctor and ask for something else. It isn't the usual effect of the drug, but it isn't all that rare, so the doctor should be too surprised that you are having this reaction.

I won't touch the stuff anymore. I can't handle things that mess with ya brain, and my opinion, that's all it
did. Certainly didn't help with pain etc;

I took it for migraines and hate it!!  It gave me horrible nightmares! My dr just took me off of it and wrote it on my chart as an allergy. He says I should never take it again.

I've never taken Amitriptyline myself, but I had considered using it once as a possible treatment for insomnia. However, I was put off by the long list of possible side-effects. Wikipedia, as usual, has an informative page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amitriptyline

It's a popular drug, but some of the possible (but relatively rare) side-effects are severe. That includes psychosis and sleep paralysis. I assume that most of these side-effects would go away once you stop taking the drug.

So yes, if you're taking this drug and suffering the side-effects, I'd suggest stopping it immediately, never mind waiting for the doctor to give his approval.