Lamictal (Lamotrigine) morning or night?

[Unburdened]

I'm currently on  200mg and gradually increasing. Is it best to take it at morning or night? I'm also on Zyban.

[Savannah]

My dr had me split the dose and take both in the am and pm. But I take it all at night with no problems. I have been taking n lamictal for 15 years.

[rowan77]

I take 150mg in the morning and 100mg at night

[Iceberg]

I take 200 and 200...never noticed a difference 

[crtclms]

My pdoc told me it didn't matter whether or not I split it into two doses, but I do. I take 200mg AM/PM. Some people here have needed to split it to get good enough coverage.

[Unburdened]

Thanks for your input everyone, I'll see how I go. Glad to hear that people have had success either way. 

[thunder]

I take 150mg morning, 150mg evening. My pdoc had me split my doses morning/evening the whole time I was tapering up, and it was never a problem. When I was on uneven doses, we would have the evening be higher. Again, this was what my pdoc told me to do and it worked fine so I never questioned it or tried anything different. 

[Cyclingsarah]

Split the dose.

I take 50 mg am, 25 mg pm.

[Blahblah]

I've always taken my 1 dose in the morning, because it's easiest and when I take my other meds and vitamins. I hate splitting the dose i can never seem to remember and I get screwed up. 1 dose is less complicated for me, but I'm also on a small amount.

[browri]

Considering there's an XR, I think the need for twice daily dosing was to get better coverage out of it for people who were using it to treat epilepsy. But in the case of mood disorders, you should be able to take the "immediate release" all at once. I found that I had fewer side effects when I split it. Perhaps some better coverage. However the side effects I experienced with Lamictal were cognitive deficits like issues with word recall and occasionally just sometimes feeling confused. When I was taking my 200mg dose all at night, I would notice this at its worst in the mornings. When I split the dose I still experienced the cognitive deficits but they were more minor and spread out evenly throughout the day. I preferred occasional "on the tip of your tongue" sensation every week or so over outright confusion every other morning. lol.

[crtclms]

I don't know what each of their diagnoses are, but I'm not talking about people with epilepsy. One person tried XR, but she did better splitting the dose. She's not usually on the boards anymore, but she's a pdoc, so I suspect she knows what works best for her.

But my husband does have to split his dose for his epilepsy. 

[notloki]

The PI for Lamictal indicates moving to twice a day dosing at 300 mg/day and above; it's once a day below that. 150 mg was the maximum I could take at one time without getting a headache and having some other side effects.