frog Posted March 9, 2009 Share Posted March 9, 2009 I have BP1 and I've been on Seroquel and lamotrigine (generic Lamictal), but the Seroquel really makes me feel bad. My doctor and I have been decreasing the Seroquel dose and my interest and ability to feel and motivation and even waking up in the morning have been getting better. Lamotrigine works wonders for my thinking and depression. My question is: has anyone been on lamotrigine alone for BP1? How long did you last without further intervention? Because once I'm off the Seroquel, I have to decide if I want to add something else on. I tried valproic acid and it was a disaster. I'm thinking of Tegretol... or lithium if I *really* had to... but the kidney risks on lithium are too scary right now... plus I don't know if either of them would even work, or have tolerable side effects. Thanks, frog Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scatty Posted March 9, 2009 Share Posted March 9, 2009 I tried this several times and each time it was a disaster! I needed risperdal to even me out. You never know what the side effects are going to be until you try. I have had no side effects from the risperdal. If it didn't stabilize me so well, I'd swear it was a sugar pill. I may need to go on lithium if risperdal poops out, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. What does your pdoc think of lamictal monotherapy? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fluffybirdie Posted March 9, 2009 Share Posted March 9, 2009 Well, just my experience and it's an oddball one, but Lamictal alone did not do me well. I still would feel depressed sometimes, manic-y others. All it did was kind of buffer my moods on the inside. People thought I acted exactly the same, but in my mind everything was foggy. Adding to my problems, I bacame physically clumsy. Adding Wellbutrin helped a lot, but I ended up dumping Lamical completely. Abilfy and Geodon both ground me quite a bit more without giving me a case of the "stupids". Everyone has a different Lamictal story. Good luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AirMarshall Posted March 9, 2009 Share Posted March 9, 2009 Will Lamcital alone work for you? Who knows unless you try it. Your strong endorsement is actually a bit unusual, so maybe this could be your miracle drug! Generally Lamictal is not a real strong antimanic drug, but again YMMV. Unless you have a known kidney problem or family history, there is no reason to be particularly concerned about taking Lithium. A small percentage of "long term users" i.e. +10-20 years can develop kidney problems. But that is why we that bloodwork done a couple times a year. And if you do start to show something abnormal you can switch to another med before your kindneys turn to stone. One point to keep in mind about this is that when Lithium first came into use in the US in 1970, patients were kept on very high dosages, near the toxicity line and often had difficulty from time to time. Since then, the practice is to start at a medium high dose for acute situations, then taper to a lower maintenance level. The early days have probably skewed the warnings. ' a.m. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crazynotstupid Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 Don't toss lithium so quickly just cuz of kidney risks. I knew about potential risks and yet I went on lithium even after 20+ years of diabetes--man, you don't get many bigger risk factors for your kidneys than that. I didn't stay on it cuz my finances improved and I got back on topamax, but hell--I figured better lithium than some alternatives. It's tried, proven, true. You never know what the intolerable side effects are until you try. If you let any damn side effect scare you you'll never try anything and you'll never get anywhere. Lithium's a good med with managable side effects and a very long history. With its proven track record, that's the one I'd choose over tegretol--I heard the horror stories too and found they were pretty much just scary campfire tales. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yellowbutterflies Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 I have BP1 and I've been on Seroquel and lamotrigine (generic Lamictal), but the Seroquel really makes me feel bad. My doctor and I have been decreasing the Seroquel dose and my interest and ability to feel and motivation and even waking up in the morning have been getting better. Lamotrigine works wonders for my thinking and depression. My question is: has anyone been on lamotrigine alone for BP1? How long did you last without further intervention? Because once I'm off the Seroquel, I have to decide if I want to add something else on. I tried valproic acid and it was a disaster. I'm thinking of Tegretol... or lithium if I *really* had to... but the kidney risks on lithium are too scary right now... plus I don't know if either of them would even work, or have tolerable side effects. Thanks, frog Hi Frog, I just wanted to share... while I have not been on Lamictal monotherapy I have been on lithium monotherapy and lamictal and lithium together. I should note that I have had a history of mania/psychosis which makes it more likely that I would need to be on an AP compared to more "mild" cases of BP. I personally have found I can not function properly in the long term on just mood stabiliser(s)... details follow... I have been determined in the past to try "minimal" medicine regimes consisting of only one or two mood stabilier(s) so I thought my experience might be relevant to your post. Q: How long did I last? A: Not long! I don't know exactly but from memory less than six months the first attempt (on li monotherapy), less than three months (on li&la therapy), the second time and less than a month the third time (on li&la therapy). Hmmm... functioning time appears to shorten each time I try it, I wonder what that's about? Anyway, as you can see I have been quite determined in the past to make just two or three meds work for me, but each time I eventually fell into an episode of hypomania, acute anxiety and/or severe depression (episodes which mimicked my pre-mania periods). Note I have not become manic or out-of-control during these times but my bad med choices or "experiements" have significantly stalled my life and arguably my treatment. (BTW in each case I added on an AP as a "rescue" medicine, Olanzapine or Seroquel, to "normalise"). So I kept fighting BP with just the one or two mood stabilisers... and losing. It has been really hard to come to terms with the fact that I can't do it on my own, no matter how much I hate having to take medication, especially APs. To re-iterate another post - monotherapy could potentially work for your symptoms and help stabilise your brain, however, there is no way to know if it will or it won't without trying. In a way we are just supervised guinea pigs I guess - that's the best science can offer us at the moment. Maybe in the future there will be some test to find out which drugs are most likely to help your brain... but that is just sci-fi right now. That said, if you do have BPI with a strong mania/psychosis, like me, I wouldn't recommend experimenting with mood stabiliser monotherapy... (but of course I'm not a qualified doctor, blah blah blah). Let us know how it goes, good luck! Sarah Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frog Posted March 10, 2009 Author Share Posted March 10, 2009 Hi Sarah, APs make me feel like crap. Risperidone gives me akathisia, Olanzapine makes me eat like crazy, and Seroquel makes me feel down and bored with everything and uncreative and lethargic. But I do have a history of mania with psychosis. Usually my mania comes after depression, though, and La takes depression away. That said, who knows, I could one day have mania without depression first. The mania starts with certain beliefs that aren't true; there's been some consistency in the types of beliefs over time. I have grandiose delusions. I lose lots of sleep. Eventually I basically don't sleep at all. Then the whole world is out of joint and my emotions are really wacky. But this only happens after a long hypomania lead-up in which, hypothetically, I could nip things in the bud. Usually my hypomania comes after some extreme loss I can't cope with - like a loss of home, of physical health, of loved ones. I'm seriously thinking of trying Li with La. Never been on Li, except for four days in my first involuntary hospitalization. I got tremors. I'll keep you guys up to speed. frog Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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