Posted by Racer on April 2, 2006, at 14:37:31
In reply to Lamictal causing depression?, posted by Whit_in_Texas on March 30, 2006, at 7:32:01
> This is my third time to try lamictal because my pdoc thinks it will help, but every time I get to a certain point, I feel more depressed and fatigued. I am taking most of it at night now, but I thought it was supposed to be activating?
>
> I am up to 125mg now.I'm feeling a bit dim this morning, so forgive me. Did you say that you never got up to therapeutic doses on your other trials? If that's the case, then it's worth titrating up to 200mg and staying there for a couple of weeks -- just to see what you see. Might be that it's the right answer for you. And it does show good faith cooperation with your doctor, always a good thing.
But your experience sounds a lot like mine. I tried Lamictal twice, the first time for several weeks and it ended with a huge meltdown on my part -- no sleep for several days, uncontrollable twitching, etc. That was combined with so many other drugs, though, and they'd pretty much all been shuffled around too recently to know if that was the Lamictal, and it wasn't even high enough dose to make me think that was really the problem. So we'll ignore that, 'k? The second, though, I got to 200mg and stayed there for several weeks. What happened was that I had a few days of improvement at 150mg, and at 200mg, but otherwise it increased my depression pretty severely. Just not the right drug for me, at all. The doctor wanted to raise it, just because I did have those few days of relief at each dosage increase, but since I was MORE depressed each time, after it passed, I wasn't willing. I had just gotten to where if this was it, it wasn't good enough and I'd just as soon give up. And that feeling passed within a week or so of getting off it.
So, in my opinion, it's worth giving it a try. It's worth raising it to therapeutic dosages, although I probably wouldn't bother going above 200mg. It's worth giving it a couple of weeks to see if it's going to be your friend.
But it's also not a magic cure for every case of depression, no matter how popular it is getting. It may not help you. All you've lost is time, which is unfortunate, because your time is valuable, and it's hellish to feel this bad, but at least you're likely to have some rebound improvement when you stop it, if it doesn't work.
Good lcuk.
poster:Racer
thread:626481
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060329/msgs/627872.html