Posted by jrbecker on October 1, 2002, at 12:21:42
In reply to jrbecker, posted by McPac on September 30, 2002, at 16:26:38
if you are getting a therapeutic effect frm a 12.5 dose, you are the exception not the rule. Most people don't start to feel something until 50-75 mg and still have to titrate up further to keep the effect. I started to have a good effect at 25 mg but it soon waned.
Secondly, if you are taking this purely for anxiety issues, you should explore other viable options (e.g., klonapin, neurontin, xanax). Unless you have a BP dx or cycle frequently, lamictal is probably not your BEST weapon for anxiety. It will help anxiety, especially by stabilizing your mood, giving you a slight AD effect, and decreasing the anger issues you were talking about. But you may want to explore other possibilties if anxiety is your core symptom. If you are going to stick with lamictal, you will eventally need to titrate up. Even if the 12.5 dose is working for you, you will eventually become tolerant to it. An obvious sign of this is when you're mood starts to become negative again and you become more irritable.
As for side effects, the big one for me is sleep. It's hard tryng to keep withn the window of optimial mood effects and still get a good night's sleep. That's the catch-22 for me so far. Hopefully the insomnia is subsiding though. As for other side effects, the other ones are 1) feeling slightly flushed during the 2-3 hours after intake, 2) memory issues 3) double vision 4) ataxia (discoordination) 5) headache. Most of these are transient and pass after settling on a new dosage level.
poster:jrbecker
thread:121078
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020930/msgs/121819.html