My husband's doctors (psych & a neurologist) are discussing trying one of the alzheimers medications for his memory.
I would like to hear from anyone who has tried these and what side-effects and benefits anyone has experienced from any of them. I just listed Aricept and memantine here as those are the ones I have seen mentioned briefly in posting. He is currently on Risperadol and the supplements only. Thank you!

There is going to be much more feedback on memantine. I didn't have any first hand experiance with that. My wife was on Aricept and we had great results. She became much more alert and interactive. She resembled he old self much more. She was also on risperdal. The problem I had was that she had had, in the past, episodes of hallucinations which were water under the bridge as HD protected her from those past experiences. On Aricept she began to remember them vividly so we had to discontinue use. That was not Aricepts fault... at least as far as I am concerned, but more her individual circumstances. I would, if I were you, be willing to give either of those a shot. Memantine is getting favorable reports... and in Alzheimer's they are using the two together and that is working even better for some of those folks. You can always discontinue use of them if you have issues or they don't seem to do much. Teresa went right back to how she was when we discontinued use and with no apparent discomfort from stopping.

My wife tried memantine and it made no noticeable difference. It did cause significant constipation--possibly due to the fact that the also takes other meds.

My dad takes aricept and memantine. If it helped his memory, it was short lived.

My husband takes Aricept. It helped for a while. He couldn't read and after taking the drug he was able to read again. He also tried memantine and it was really hard on his bowels. It also brought back his chorea and he started leaning to far to one side. We discontinued the memantine but he still takes Aricept. As Eric said give them a try if they don't work you can discontinue taking them.