Drugs that make you feel emotions, not blun them.

[Guest conundrum]

Hi,

I'm a new poster. I have a problem with anhedonia. I find it hard to feel love and attachement towards other people. I have had this ever since I stopped prozac 7 years ago. I have been off drugs for years and my brain never returned to baseline where I felt emotions like I had while on prozac the first time, or before I took drugs.

I wonder if there are any drugs that can help people feel their emotions more fully?

I have found the SSRIs prozac and lexapro only blunt my feelings. I think adrafinil does this also. Wellbutrin and ritlain didn't do anything, neither did oxycodone. Pristiq is the closest thing to giving me some feelings but it only lasted for a couple weeks and not very strongly.

Does anyone know any legal drugs that can make one feel things more strongly? Do TCAs like nortrpytline and desipramine help? How bout mirtazapine since it might block the blunting effects of serotonin?

Regards,

Conundrum

[tryp]

Hi,

I'm sorry you're having a tough time. For me, anhedonia and not feeling anything were due to lingering depression, and they stopped when I was on the right medication. Maybe you should see a doctor and talk about whether maybe you're still having symptoms of depression?

For me, mirtazapine didn't work too great for that, but SSRIs have been good. Everyone is different and even though it's frustrating, sometimes you just have to keep trying until you find something that works.

Tryp

P.S. Therapy can help too.

Edited 23 Apr 2010 by tryp

[AirMarshall]

So you are cured of any depression or affective disorder?

I don't know of any drugs intended to increase emotions. Certainly you can use or misuse any number of drugs and start to lose control, stimulants, etc.

If you have untreated depression then anhedonia is par for the course.

Psychiatrists are the experts at dealing with mood and emotion. I recommend that you dedicate yourself to getting well, seeing a psychiatrist and talk therapist and following their recommnedations for medicines and treatment.

a.m.

[Guest conundrum]

I'm planning on seeing a psychiatrist tuesday. My GP has been prescribing me drugs over the last year, prior to that period I was off all drugs for 6 years. During that time I never really got sad or down wanting to die feelings, I just felt nothing. I feel like the world has no color anymore.

My biggest complaints are not feeling my emotions in the same way or intensity, I mean i basically can't feel euphoria ever. I have trouble with memory and concentration. I also have some minor joint pains and sometimes nightmares, but thats about it. Not really sad or anxious, just half a live. Sometimes I get sad when I think about all that has happened to my brain from taking prozac as a teen, but thats not very often. I don't really have any interests anymore like music which i was once passionate about and I just work in boring low paying jobs because I don't have the ambition to do anything else or get a sense of reward from anything. I hope a psychiatrist can help. I found that therapy and group therapy did nothing to make me feel emotions.

I don't know if I'd agree that psychiatrists are experts in emotion. The last one I saw who has been practicing for years said finding the right med is like throwing darts on a board. Not much expertise there if you ask me.

[celestia]

Maybe I'm missing something, but you sound depressed as hell. An anti-depressant might help bring you up to a level where you are able to get some joy back into your life. I know what you mean about emotional blunting, but that's not what your thing sounds like. It sounds like you're too depressed to feel much of anything.

[Guest conundrum]

Maybe I'm missing something, but you sound depressed as hell. An anti-depressant might help bring you up to a level where you are able to get some joy back into your life. I know what you mean about emotional blunting, but that's not what your thing sounds like. It sounds like you're too depressed to feel much of anything.

I might be sounding a little more frustrated now because of relationship problems, but maybe you are right. I guess I just thought it was because of different effects of different neurotransmitters, sometimes I think I had permanently high serotonin since I don't really get sad or anxious and SSRIs give me diarrhrea, headaches, spacey tired feeling, and cause sexual dysfunction.

I don't really know what to try I guess the psychiatrist will help.

[SashaSue]

It sounds like depression to me too. Honestly, I've never heard of anyone having effects from Prozac seven years after taking it.

[Guest conundrum]

It sounds like depression to me too. Honestly, I've never heard of anyone having effects from Prozac seven years after taking it.

I just think its odd that the anhedonia and memory problems, started literally 3-4 weeks after I stopped taking prozac and I never experienced that before. That wasn't the reason I was given prozac. I was given prozac cuz I worried about the future and felt sad and cried a lot. Now I do neither of those things, thank god. I just feel like a robot or something.

If I went back to feeling the way I used to feel before taking the drugs I wouldn't blame prozac, but now I feel different and actually less human. I feel like I need something noradrenergic or antiserotonergic to help me get some emotions back. Kinda fight fire with fire. Use a drug to reverse what a drug did, since therapy, meditation, diet, exercise, relationships, didn't help restore my emotions throughout those years off the meds.

Frankly I don't care if what people call it is depression or what I call it iatrogenic anhedonia, as long as something makes me feel human again.

[Guest conundrum]

Sorry if my last post came off confrontational at the end regarding the diagnosis. I truly appreciate all the responses, even if my viewpoint is somewhat different.

[SashaSue]

The thing is, iatrogenic anhedonia is generally used to describe something that's happening while someone is taking a med, not 7 years after taking it. If what you're describing has ever happened to anyone, you'd think there'd be some kind of record of it somewhere, and there doesn't seem to be.

My concern is that, if you go to see a doctor, insisting on your interpretation of events, it's going to be awfully difficult for him or her to take you seriously where other matters are concerned.

I also can't help wondering why you're so invested in clinging to your unlikely self-diagnosis.

[OscillateWildly]

Correct me if I"m wrong but there are protracted syndromes which can occur to patients permanently after using a drug.

There are some individuals who have permanent w/d syndromes when trying to stop SSRIs. See "paxil progress" and read the forum notes. I doubt these reactions are common, but there are some people who don't seem to be able to really STOP using the drug because their brain is not the same even months and months after.

And, of course, there is tardive diskinesia, a notorious long term syndrome resulting from dropamine blockade. The cause isn't known but it is hypothesized to be the result of long term hard (i.e. a firm block as opposed to the on-off block of newer atypicals) blockade of dopamine receptors. When dopamine receptors are blocked in this fashion the brain upregulates dopamine receptors in certain areas of the brain. These new receptors result in uncontrolled facial movements such as tongue darting, blinking the eyes, and making facial contortions (dopamine causes eye blinking, facial gestures and facial movements).

TD is permanent. Even if you stop taking the drug, it never goes away.

Now, I'm not saying that the OP actually has a permanent syndrome from prozac, all I'm saying is that such things have happened before and it is not out of the realm of possibility.

EDIT: I would also say that it is recognized in medicine that some patients will have adverse reactions to drugs that can be permanent. Even if 99% of users of a drug are fine, there is that 1% who takes the antibiotic and they develop a severe neurological condition which makes them severely psychotic, and it is permanent and irreversible. Even if 99.99% of users of the HPV vaccine are fine, there is the .01% who gets a severe autoimmune disease that makes them walk backwards and unable to feed or clothe themselves anymore.

We have unique bodies and drugs are molecules that interact with our bodies, sometimes with devastating effects. What is fine for the majority of humanity could be poison for another. Milk protein is fine for the majority of humans, but for a small subset of individuals with certain HLA types, it might cause an autoimmune reaction which destroys the insulin making capacity of their pancreas.

If a patient never had symptoms like these before and they onset after stopping a drug, and the symptoms have never gone away ever, I think it is reasonable to consider maybe the drug played a role in it. These are not the OPs original symptoms of depression.

Now you might be saying "if such a syndrome is possible from prozac, it would be described in the adverse effect notes, much in the way TARDIVE DISKINESIA is a bold print adverse effect in the notes of any new prescription of haldol".

What you fail to recognize, with this line of thinking, is that a long term syndrome from prozac involving such vague depression-like symptoms as chronic severe anhedenoia/numbness/flattening would EASILY and CHRNOICALLY be confused with a depressive disorder. In other words, it would be impossible to reliably tell the difference between symptoms of depression (which would be not unexpected to return w/o prozac), and the symptoms of this hypothetical withdrawal syndrome. It would be impossible to tell apart, and any patient who tried to get recognized would get the saem response the OP is getting now - "you're just depressed, snap out of denial".

Now, TD is so well recognized only because it is physical and obvious. The patient sits there blinking and darting their tongue about, grimacing and such. If the symptoms of TD were more like, "increased hallucinations, increased paranoia, permanently for life and resistant to all drugs"... well, then, obviously, TD wouldn't even be recognized because all medical professionals would tell patients that it is just their schizophrenia coming back and worsening. For all we know, another symptom of TD is worsening difficult to treat psychosis... but we can't possibly know that because there is no way to reliably tell the difference between the original disease and any possible effect of medication in this case.

Personally I find the OP's story interesting and I agree it sounds possible something happened in his brain triggered by prozac. These symptoms have no commonality to what he was experiencing before (which sounds like anxiety/intense negative emotionality).

Edited 23 Apr 2010 by OscillateWildly

[crtclms]

OW, have you ever heard of Occam's Razor?

[SashaSue]

Correct me if I"m wrong but there are protracted syndromes which can occur to patients permanently after using a drug.

There are some individuals who have permanent w/d syndromes when trying to stop SSRIs. See "paxil progress" and read the forum notes. I doubt these reactions are common, but there are some people who don't seem to be able to really STOP using the drug because their brain is not the same even months and months after.

And, of course, there is tardive diskinesia, a notorious long term syndrome resulting from dropamine blockade. The cause isn't known but it is hypothesized to be the result of long term hard (i.e. a firm block as opposed to the on-off block of newer atypicals) blockade of dopamine receptors. When dopamine receptors are blocked in this fashion the brain upregulates dopamine receptors in certain areas of the brain. These new receptors result in uncontrolled facial movements such as tongue darting, blinking the eyes, and making facial contortions (dopamine causes eye blinking, facial gestures and facial movements).

TD is permanent. Even if you stop taking the drug, it never goes away.

Now, I'm not saying that the OP actually has a permanent syndrome from prozac, all I'm saying is that such things have happened before and it is not out of the realm of possibility.

EDIT: I would also say that it is recognized in medicine that some patients will have adverse reactions to drugs that can be permanent. Even if 99% of users of a drug are fine, there is that 1% who takes the antibiotic and they develop a severe neurological condition which makes them severely psychotic, and it is permanent and irreversible. Even if 99.99% of users of the HPV vaccine are fine, there is the .01% who gets a severe autoimmune disease that makes them walk backwards and unable to feed or clothe themselves anymore.

We have unique bodies and drugs are molecules that interact with our bodies, sometimes with devastating effects. What is fine for the majority of humanity could be poison for another. Milk protein is fine for the majority of humans, but for a small subset of individuals with certain HLA types, it might cause an autoimmune reaction which destroys the insulin making capacity of their pancreas.

If a patient never had symptoms like these before and they onset after stopping a drug, and the symptoms have never gone away ever, I think it is reasonable to consider maybe the drug played a role in it. These are not the OPs original symptoms of depression.

Now you might be saying "if such a syndrome is possible from prozac, it would be described in the adverse effect notes, much in the way TARDIVE DISKINESIA is a bold print adverse effect in the notes of any new prescription of haldol".

What you fail to recognize, with this line of thinking, is that a long term syndrome from prozac involving such vague depression-like symptoms as chronic severe anhedenoia/numbness/flattening would EASILY and CHRNOICALLY be confused with a depressive disorder. In other words, it would be impossible to reliably tell the difference between symptoms of depression (which would be not unexpected to return w/o prozac), and the symptoms of this hypothetical withdrawal syndrome. It would be impossible to tell apart, and any patient who tried to get recognized would get the saem response the OP is getting now - "you're just depressed, snap out of denial".

Now, TD is so well recognized only because it is physical and obvious. The patient sits there blinking and darting their tongue about, grimacing and such. If the symptoms of TD were more like, "increased hallucinations, increased paranoia, permanently for life and resistant to all drugs"... well, then, obviously, TD wouldn't even be recognized because all medical professionals would tell patients that it is just their schizophrenia coming back and worsening. For all we know, another symptom of TD is worsening difficult to treat psychosis... but we can't possibly know that because there is no way to reliably tell the difference between the original disease and any possible effect of medication in this case.

Personally I find the OP's story interesting and I agree it sounds possible something happened in his brain triggered by prozac. These symptoms have no commonality to what he was experiencing before (which sounds like anxiety/intense negative emotionality).

Paxil Progress is an anti-med site, and has about as much credibility with me as Fox News. I have never heard of a withdrawal issue from an SSRI that lasted 7 years. And I looked for one, all over the internet, pubmed too.

TD is entirely different from what the OP described, and does actually sometimes remit with discontinuation of the med. Has anyone but you ever suggested that increasing difficulty in treating psychosis could be a part of TD?

The OP was depressed before starting Prozac. After stopping Prozac, he/she became depressed again, with a shift in symptoms, but still, depressed.

[Guest Guest]

Well I will just tell the psychiatrist what I am experiencing and try to keep an open mind. I once saw a study that I unfortunately did not bookmark that showed that exposure to SSRIs chronically down regulated the serotonergic transporter so that there was a permanent antidepressant effect. Also another study showed that ridiculously high doses of prozac causes brain cell axons to change shape in the same way that MDMA does, and the MDMA study showed that these curls remained after 7 years. Would it be hard to imagine that axon terminal curls wouldn't last just as long? I took a normal dose, 2omgs, but all my liver functions slightly elevated when I came off the drug after 4 years.

Anyway I hope maybe the Occam's Razor thing is right. I know that if the doc thinks I'm depressed I'm still gonna end up taking the same drugs as if I had iatrogenic anhedonia anyway, so I'm not gonna fight her diagnosis, unless it comes back as something ridiculous like your delusionally psychotic for thinking drugs could do this to someone.

Interestingly I saw this patent application about iatrogenic anhedonia. Here it says that iatrogenic anhedonia may still require treatment even after the serotonergic drug is no longer being used.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2006/0217394.html

"Although one skilled in the art might expect any symptom produced by a drug to abate when such treatment is discontinued, once a patient has as a sequella of serotonergic therapy experienced the symptoms defined herein as treatment emergent or iatrogenic anhedonia, the anhedonic symptoms will, in certain embodiments, continue to require treatment."

It does state that iatrogenic anhedonia develops while on the drug, for me it happened from coming off the drug. When I was on prozac I was always in a good mood. So on face value it does sound like returning depression. Its the most obvious thing to think like many of you have suggested. But if you look at the subtle differences it seems to be something different. I don't think its outside the realm of possibility, but thats not my concern right now, to argue over what caused it. I just need to find something to make me feel things again. I thought time would reverse it or the number of wholistic and natural remedies I have tried but nothing helps.

I guess I was hoping that there was someone with similar symptoms who knew of a drug that increased feelings since it seems like a lot of drugs blunt emotions and thats how they help people calm down.

[conundrum]

whoops, last post was me!

[celestia]

I guess I was hoping that there was someone with similar symptoms who knew of a drug that increased feelings since it seems like a lot of drugs blunt emotions and thats how they help people calm down.

That's the thing, lots of us (me included) have gone off our ADs only to have symptoms come back, sometimes with a vengeance. And it doesn't have to be the same symptoms we were initially medicating. Any symptom of depression is probably a clue we should not have gone off the AD.

I know you're not hung up on the "whys" or "hows" or "what-ifs" and that's a good thing. How you got to where you are RIGHT NOW is a red herring. What matters is fixing it and an AD will be a great place to start. If it doesn't work, you at least tried the obvious remedy. You've done everything else, as you've listed, adding a med to your list of depression busters is the only logical thing to do at this point. (imo)

Let us know how it turns out.

Edited 23 Apr 2010 by celestia

[conundrum]

Correct me if I"m wrong but there are protracted syndromes which can occur to patients permanently after using a drug.

There are some individuals who have permanent w/d syndromes when trying to stop SSRIs. See "paxil progress" and read the forum notes. I doubt these reactions are common, but there are some people who don't seem to be able to really STOP using the drug because their brain is not the same even months and months after.

And, of course, there is tardive diskinesia, a notorious long term syndrome resulting from dropamine blockade. The cause isn't known but it is hypothesized to be the result of long term hard (i.e. a firm block as opposed to the on-off block of newer atypicals) blockade of dopamine receptors. When dopamine receptors are blocked in this fashion the brain upregulates dopamine receptors in certain areas of the brain. These new receptors result in uncontrolled facial movements such as tongue darting, blinking the eyes, and making facial contortions (dopamine causes eye blinking, facial gestures and facial movements).

TD is permanent. Even if you stop taking the drug, it never goes away.

Now, I'm not saying that the OP actually has a permanent syndrome from prozac, all I'm saying is that such things have happened before and it is not out of the realm of possibility.

EDIT: I would also say that it is recognized in medicine that some patients will have adverse reactions to drugs that can be permanent. Even if 99% of users of a drug are fine, there is that 1% who takes the antibiotic and they develop a severe neurological condition which makes them severely psychotic, and it is permanent and irreversible. Even if 99.99% of users of the HPV vaccine are fine, there is the .01% who gets a severe autoimmune disease that makes them walk backwards and unable to feed or clothe themselves anymore.

We have unique bodies and drugs are molecules that interact with our bodies, sometimes with devastating effects. What is fine for the majority of humanity could be poison for another. Milk protein is fine for the majority of humans, but for a small subset of individuals with certain HLA types, it might cause an autoimmune reaction which destroys the insulin making capacity of their pancreas.

If a patient never had symptoms like these before and they onset after stopping a drug, and the symptoms have never gone away ever, I think it is reasonable to consider maybe the drug played a role in it. These are not the OPs original symptoms of depression.

Now you might be saying "if such a syndrome is possible from prozac, it would be described in the adverse effect notes, much in the way TARDIVE DISKINESIA is a bold print adverse effect in the notes of any new prescription of haldol".

What you fail to recognize, with this line of thinking, is that a long term syndrome from prozac involving such vague depression-like symptoms as chronic severe anhedenoia/numbness/flattening would EASILY and CHRNOICALLY be confused with a depressive disorder. In other words, it would be impossible to reliably tell the difference between symptoms of depression (which would be not unexpected to return w/o prozac), and the symptoms of this hypothetical withdrawal syndrome. It would be impossible to tell apart, and any patient who tried to get recognized would get the saem response the OP is getting now - "you're just depressed, snap out of denial".

Now, TD is so well recognized only because it is physical and obvious. The patient sits there blinking and darting their tongue about, grimacing and such. If the symptoms of TD were more like, "increased hallucinations, increased paranoia, permanently for life and resistant to all drugs"... well, then, obviously, TD wouldn't even be recognized because all medical professionals would tell patients that it is just their schizophrenia coming back and worsening. For all we know, another symptom of TD is worsening difficult to treat psychosis... but we can't possibly know that because there is no way to reliably tell the difference between the original disease and any possible effect of medication in this case.

Personally I find the OP's story interesting and I agree it sounds possible something happened in his brain triggered by prozac. These symptoms have no commonality to what he was experiencing before (which sounds like anxiety/intense negative emotionality).

Paxil Progress is an anti-med site, and has about as much credibility with me as Fox News.  I have never heard of a withdrawal issue from an SSRI that lasted 7 years.  And I looked for one, all over the internet, pubmed too.

TD is entirely different from what the OP described, and does actually sometimes remit with discontinuation of the med.  Has anyone but you ever suggested that increasing difficulty in treating psychosis could be a part of TD?  

The OP was depressed before starting Prozac.  After stopping Prozac, he/she became depressed again, with a shift in symptoms, but still, depressed.

You know I used to belong to a couple yahoo groups like paxil progress.  At the time I came off prozac I believed a lot of that stuff.  Many of the people claim to have really bad reactions to drugs, where now they have sensitivity to light, can't remember how many showers they took in a day, basically neurological problems.  Many refuse to see doctors and I can't really blame them if everything claimed is true.  However I don't think its possible to have protracted withdrawal symptoms, thats really just a nice way of saying brain damage.   If you still have problems after 7 years its not withdrawal, its permanent, or a returning disease, or mutated.  Do these drugs cause brain changes?  They must or poop out would not exist.  The brain adapts over time, and there is certainly no interest(money) in finding out whether the drugs caused by the adaptations go back to normal.  Usually doctors will say they've never heard of something like what I've claimed, but they've never flat out said its impossible.  

I hope Occam's Razor is correct, since that would give me a lot more hope than believingI have brain damage.  The funny thing is that if the DSM definition of depression didn't exist Occam's Razor wouldn't work.  You'd see someone has symptoms A,B,C, and then they come off the drug and have symptoms D,E,F and then you'd go "wtf?" but since all those symptoms are grouped as depression it seems like Occam's Razor fits.

Like I said who knows whats going on.  Unfortunately its impossible to know.  Sometimes I'd like to see a neurologist just know if something is really messed up.  I've found a little relief with pristiq its like my perception changed and the fleeting moments I've had of "color" came back more often instead of just a few times a day.  My friend asked me if "I felt as though a huge weight was lifted off my shoulder."  I said, "no its like the world went from black and white to more color." and she said "hmm weird but if you feel better good."

Sometimes yes it feels like a change in perception.  Like to me being at the beach is literally no different in the feelings that evokes from sitting her at night typing this on a dreary day.  Its all the same, sometimes I feel a difference for a split second when a memory comes up and then I feel something.  Usually different places have a different "aura" like a city at night has a vibe and energy that is different from being in the woods, but to me its all the same, black and white.  

Well I'm seeing a psychiatrist tomorrow, hope she can help.  

Also wish I spelled blunt right in the title of this thread.

[conundrum]

That's the thing, lots of us (me included) have gone off our ADs only to have symptoms come back, sometimes with a vengeance. And it doesn't have to be the same symptoms we were initially medicating. Any symptom of depression is probably a clue we should not have gone off the AD.

Do you have any examples of how symptoms returned differently, after coming off of ADs?

Let us know how it turns out.

Will do.

[celestia]

Example:

For me it was always just more despair. And the intensity of the hopelessness, despair, etc., was more acute (or at least that's how memory serves, but I've been med compliant for at least 10 years.)

Do these drugs cause brain changes?

If they are inhibiting re-uptake I would say that is a change. I have been on and off (mostly on) anti-depressants since the early 80s when I was on TCAs (that didn't work all that well.) All I know is that when I go off the SSRI or SSNRI my symptoms return way worse than they are when I am medicated.

Good luck to you!

Edited 27 Apr 2010 by celestia

[conundrum]

So I saw my new psychiatrist today.  She seems pretty good, been practicing for about 40 years. She seemed to think I have a mood stability problem since I was always feeling good without many bad days on prozac.  She said below hypomanic.   In addition when I came off prozac I was into conspiracies and into things like numerology and astrology, which I had no interest in before, or now. All of those interests faded 5 years ago and I chalk it up to some kind of rebound in dopamine from being quashed by serotonin for so long, but who knows.  Also another reason she mentioned mood stability is that she said I'm treatment resistant and people with mood stability are often treatment resistant to standard antidepressants.

Right off the bat in response to my short term memory problems she suggested get a test for Lyme's disease, she also mentioned neuropsychological testing which I don't really know much about but it sounds good. She said I shouldn't be having memory problems at 27. She also prescribed lamictal I guess since she suspects a possible mood stability disorder and it could help with that and also works as an antidepressant.

So far so good for a first visit. Also for once in a long time, I didn't read all the side effects for this drug. I figure if they come I'll know it. She warned me about the risk of Steven Johnson's Syndrome and so thats enough for me. Its nice not worrying about that stuff.

[celestia]

There are a lot of people here that LOVE lamictal. I've never been on it myself, but it seems to be a really, really good one with a minimum of side effects. Rash and headaches are the ones I've heard of here, but you can search for yourself to find the lamictal threads.

Yay! Progress!

[Guest Conundrum]

Thanks, I might take a look. I'm trying to avoid reading anything negative about it but if there are a lot of successes it will be interesting to see what it does. I really hope it can help with anhedonia and its something different from what I have tried before so its worth a shot.

[Stickler]

Good luck.

[Guest helpmeleave5]

hi. my name is maeve.i was on and off paxil for 15 years. i was unable to come off it and stay off it as i became suicidal and had horrible wd symptoms. the last time i went on paxil was in march 2010. since then i have been experiencing anhedonia, a complete inability to feel pleasure or register any type of feeling good or bad.i would kill myself only i can't find the courage to do it.i'm really suffering as i cannot feel anything.i feel absolutely numb with an ianability to feel love or pleasure. you say you've been off prozac 7 years and that you have anhedonia ever since. i'm wondering if you are still living with anhedonia and if so why you have not tried to end your life. i know what anhedonia is and if i thought i was to experience anhedonia for 7 years or forever, i would have to consider suicide. i think you are brain damaged and so am i . i have been off paxil for 7 days. do you think your anhedonia will ever go away?

[bpladybug]

"Also another reason she mentioned mood stability is that she said I'm treatment resistant and people with mood stability are often treatment resistant to standard antidepressants."

This was your first appt. with a new Psychiatrist? I am a little confused. How can you be 'treatment resistant' if you have only tried Lexapro and Wellbutrin? Seems a little premature.

I do think it is great that you are starting Lamictal. I hope that works well for you! Good luck!