trileptal, sick feeling

[steves]

Ive been on 1200mg of trileptal for about a month now.

It seems almost daily I get dizzy with just a sick feeling almost like car sickness.

I since went down to 900mg mabye that will help.

I just don't like this med in general I used to take depakote 1000mg  in my opion a better med.

What do you guys think of trileptal.

[Guest Skittle unlogged]

Ive been on 1200mg of trileptal for about a month now.

It seems almost daily I get dizzy with just a sick feeling almost like car sickness.

I since went down to 900mg mabye that will help.

I just don't like this med in general I used to take depakote 1000mg

[Guest Skittle unlogged]

PS I really would advise against changing your doses on your own.  From what you say it sounds as though you decided yourself to drop down to 900mg.  The anti-convulsants are a drug class that really shouldn't be messed with like that - you need some kind of supervision.

[Todd]

Hi steves:

Thanks for posting an update. I am sorry to hear that Trileptal has not been treating you well. While I have no personal experience with Trileptal, I think that you will find that some folks here love it, some folks hate it, and some just don't care much one way or the other, with a reasonably even distribution at that. You just need to find the right medication, or combination of medications, for you.

Have you been in contact with your pdoc at all, or have you been thinking about looking for someone new? Do you think that Trileptal has "worked" for you, but the side effects have outweighed the benefits? Would you consider going back to Depakote, or would you be more interested in trying a new medication?

Whatever you decide, I hope you find a pdoc with whom you are comfortable and one that treats you properly. Perhaps Depakote is the best choice for you, perhaps you will find something you like a lot better. The good news is that you at least have Depakote as an option to which you can safely return.

Best of luck.

Todd.

[redbamboo]

I'm one of the folks that is learning to hate Trileptal.  I started it early in the spring, doc pushed up my dose to 1200 about a month ago and DAMN!  I was a walking wreck.  Er, stumbling wreck with the occasional dive-bomb to the floor.  I had double vision.  The most terrible headaches and nausea ever. 

I called my pdoc, told her about it... she said give it a week.

I did. It continued to get worse.  Screw double vision, give me triple!  Hey, give me tunnel vision, too!  Walking?  That's for weenies!  A real woman knows how to crawl to get to the kitchen (and to knock one's head on the coffee table en-route).

So we dropped it back down.  No, actually, I dropped it back down, because pdoc said give it MORE time. 

Now if I take 300 (which I'm doing right before bed) I wake up with a nasty taste in my mouth and a headache.  It's gotten to the point that I start gagging when I get it out of the bottle.

If only treating depression with aversion therapy were so simple...

The trileptal seemed to work fine for me in the beginning... but it's turned into the devil.

Give yourself some time, but don't stay miserable for longer than a month (especially if it is getting worse).  But that's just my opinion.

(Disclaimer:  I no way endorse self-medication or self-adjustment to current medications.  Whatever I type is to be taken as utter balderdash and to be ignored immediately.)

[JustAnotherNut]

Hi!

I kind of liked Trileptal, since it made my head feel slightly less clouded than on Tegretol. I had a busted balance organ at the time (still busted btw) so I can't say that I noticed any dizziness due to the Trileptal. But after a while it stopped working for me, and I had seizures again. My theory is that I was on a way to low dose, 900mg/day. (That is about the same as 600mg/day of Tegretol) It took me a loooong time to see my neurologist, close to 5 months actually, so I upped my dosage on my own several times. Still felt that I was having seizure-like activity, even when I was at 2100mg/day. Turned out that was anxiety and panic-attacks instead... But even at that high dosage I felt pretty OK, all things considered.

Now I'm back on Tegretol, and only the anxiety keeps me from going back to Trileptal. I can't say I trust the drug, and it is not a good way to treat anxiety to swap to it.

H.

[Spencer]

I'm currently on my second round of Trileptal, starting at 150mg once a day. My first round ended in hyponatremia-like side effects, so I discontinued it. (The effects started at about 900mg). Now, about six months later I was prescribed Trileptal again at a microdose of 150mg, up to 300mg a day.

My past expereince with Trileptal proved 300mg to be a very, very effective antidepressant for some reason.  Some people don't get any AD effects from it.

Now, status quo, after taking my first 150mg pill, I spent the whole night vomiting and the next few days nauseous. I'm going to titrate up very slowly to avoid nausea. I hope to not go over 600mg.

For me, it was a wonderful medication untill the nausea and extreme lethargy set in. At times, I was practically unable to get off of the couch. I was so nauseous and tired as fuck.

--

Spencer