Mental Health Coming off Lamotrigine (Lamictal)

[paranoid android]

Fyi I tried to lower my gabapentin dose a couple months ago. Did it slow. 100 mg every three weeks from 900 mg.Took me about two months to stabilize again bc that was too fast. Fucking mother fucking Fuck.

Point being, it can take a while to get back to normal after a too fast taper. 10 days ain't nothin. Gonna have to go the turtle route. Use goodrx for scripts and go to a cheap walk in clinic. Tjats what I do and is pretty cost effective for those without insurance. Costs me less than insurance anyway.

Take it slow, keep it steady keep it simple. Wait til you stabilize before making a cut. 10 percent a month dude. Volumetric dosing or mg scale. Fun right?

Gabapentin withdrawal is honestly one of the worst withdrawal symptoms i have ever experienced. It felt like a combination of Benzo and Opiate withdrawal and i found both to be less painful then coming off Gabapentin. The combination of Benzo like withdrawals and pain that is even worse then coming off super potent Opioids such as Fentanyl especially nerve pain makes for a hellish withdrawal. Not to mention it took me a entire summer to detox from it and get back to feeling normal. I would probably rank it second to Effexor aka Venlafaxine withdrawal in terms of pure hell.

I found Lamotrigine withdrawal to be nothing like this at all which makes sense as they are 2 completely unrelated anti-convulsants. Besides rebound mood swings i never experienced any real withdrawal symptoms coming off Lamictal.

 

[CosmicG]

Yeah Gabapentin withdraw is horrible. My experience began in a rehab where I was prescribed ridiculously high doses to get me off of benzos. After leaving that hospital AMA because they were also trying to labotomize me with seroquel at the same time I went back to the benzos but now also had this other monkey on my back...It took me about six months to fully recover from that.

I would not trade this experience for that one though this is still a nightmare. I am sorry if anyone has taken the time to read any of this because I have come to the conclusion it was never the Lamictal that caused these migraines/headaches to occur in the first place. The nicotine level on my e-cig was wayyy too high, causing me to have these debilitating migraines. What is worse is that I did not realize what the cause was and just kept hitting the e-cig while taking tons of acetaminophen and caffiene to help deal with the pain, digging myself into a hole called medication overuse headache. So I don't have fullblown migraines anymore, but still constant moderate headaches that I wake up with every morning which last for indeterminate amounts of time every day.

I have begun cutting back on the analgesic and have decided to cut out caffiene completely until my health returns, though at this point I am not sure that will ever happen. So I did that blood test again to follow up on my white blood cell count. This time the white blood cells were fine, but the hemoglobin levels were low! Now they want a stool sample. Unreal. The way I have lived my life up to this point has not been good. I fear I waited too long to care about my health, and am now paying the price.

My shady past has me connecting every percieved symptom to a bad decision I have made bringing me to certain terminal illness. Hardly any family support because they believe I am a hypochondriac. Sorry for the rant, I just dont really have anyone to talk to about any of this and even if I don't get much feedback it helps to get it out and look back later.

 

[jammin83]

Ya gaba withdrawal is shitty for sure. Not quite as severely debilitating as zyprexa but pretty close. I've been on it for going on 5 years now so it's a hella dependency. Gonna try just cutting 40 to 50 mg a month and see how that goes. I was never messed up from gaba for that long...mainly zyprexa, good ap more or less, just not good for every day. So trying to taper off of gaba and still dealing with some heavy issues from zyprexa. When I cut it, it flared all of my zyprexa symptoms up. Its quite the conundrum but beginning to come around I think.

Cosmic, I think you are dealing with withdrawal from lamotrigine. Like I said, it can take a while to stabilize. Couple months sometimes, maybe longer.

When you are on these drugs for a few years or more they can do funky things. I would say with some certainty that it is withdrawal related.

Get stable and make small or tiny cuts but get stable first. It will take some time to taper but you're on the right track. Don't ever let it get too out of control.

Stay well dude.

 

[CosmicG]

Thanks for the words of wisdom Jammin. I spoke with a doctor yesterday about it and he actually encouraged me to go ahead and start weaning myself off of it. He suggested it before I even got a chance to bring it up, which took me by surprise. As soon a he saw Lamictal on my chart he looked confused and asked why I was taking the medicine and for how long. After explaining to him that I was diagnosed when I was a teenager and had been taking meds for it pretty much ever since, he asked if I thought I was bipolar.

I told him about how I had my doubts and here is why, and he actually completely agreed with me, saying that most people who get early diagnosis like that often times grow out of it. This is the opposite of what my last doctor would have said, that it was a lifetime disorder that needed to be handled with medication. I feel a lot better about this knowing that there are doctors that would agree with me. I thought it would be a lot harder to find one that would.

I'll be going down 25 mgs for three months then stopping completely. I'm really looking forward to being free of all psychiatric medications. I forget what it feels like to not be medicated.

 

[alexie]

Hi, Cosmic G I know it's been a few years since you posted this but I would like to know how you are doing? I am new to this site and I read your post and I am going through the same thing. I just want to know if there is hope after getting off of Lamictal and were you able to do this?

Thank you so much!