Posted by SLS on December 19, 2015, at 23:41:40
In reply to good to irrtible, posted by rjlockhart37 on December 19, 2015, at 22:38:25
> i was in vary postive mood, not euphoric just content and then it faded through the rest of the day......i took lamictal 2 hours ago and i feel better, lamictal does not enhance the mood but it stablizes it, that what i've noticed what lamotragine is ... it's a stablizer
I know it sounds trite, but everyone is different when it comes to the effects psychotropic drugs have on them. For me, lamotrigine is much more an antidepressant than it is a mood stabilizer. The last time I had a manic episode, I was taking 300 mg/day of lamotrigine, and I blew right through it as if I were taking nothing at all. I needed Zyprexa to put the fire out.
I would recommend not playing with your dosage by going up and down so frequently. There is no way your brain can truly stabilize itself if you do this. From the way you describe things, you might do best at 300 mg/day. Otherwise, you can start at 200 mg/day and titrate upwards methodically from there, understanding that depression might re-emerge. Just don't hop up from 200 to 400. At least give 250 mg/day a week and 300 mg/day another two weeks if necessary.
I don't think you can be "too stabilized". I guess it is a matter of semantics. You might be experiencing a flat affect or cognitive dulling as a result of taking too much lamotrigine. Unfortunately, there are some people for whom there is no optimum dosage. They suffer cognitive side effects at dosages that are too low to produce a therapeutic response. I think you should be okay, though.
Do you think you are being confused by catching an immediate "buzz" every time you raise the dosage, only to see it disappear? For instance, when you increase the dosage from 200 mg/day to 300 mg/day, do you feel a brief improvement that lasts a day or so? Do you then decide to raise the dosage again to 400 mg/day in order to recapture a therapeutic effect, only then to experience flat affect, memory impairments, and cognitive dulling?
- ScottSome see things as they are and ask why.
I dream of things that never were and ask why not.- George Bernard Shaw
poster:SLS
thread:1084805
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20151119/msgs/1084806.html