Misc WellButrin, any dangers associated with sudden discontinuation?

[PinK~cloud]

Hey there fellow bluelighters!

Basically the title says it all. I started on wellbutrin in January or so of 2011 at college. The doctor who prescribed me it works through the campus health & wellness. I have had excellent success with the stuff. I started on it because I have been depressed on and off for the past 5 years or so, and also because I have had to deal with severe, ongoing fatigue. I had originally "battled" my fatigue with adderall perscriptions since the start of college, but as with most people, it only eventually made my fatigue and attention worse as time went on.

Anyway, I'm back at home for the summer, and my home town is far from the university. The doctor at the health & wellness is requiring me to come in to get a refill...but that isn't possible and is impractical for me to do. So, while I wait for my records to be transferred to my local doctor's office, I am a bit screwed. It has been 2 days since I have taken a tablet. I haven't noticed anything out of the "normal", but I fear it will only get worse the longer I wait. I was on zoloft for 2 years in high school and when I finally quit it, I had some weird stuff happen, like "brain zaps" for 2 or 3 weeks.

TL;DR: Is it DANGEROUS to stop wellbutrin abruptly? I plan on taking it again once I receive a refill, but until then, I'm shit out of luck.

 

[Kledsky]

I have chronic pain from a severe back problem that I've been dealing with for over a decade now. I have depression as a result of this which isn't uncommon. I took just about ever SSRI there is, except Zoloft and Paxil. But I did take Lexapro, Celexa, Cymbalta, Prozac and Effexor. I might be leaving one of them out. They gave me really odd very uncomfortable side effects, with Effexor being the worst and the last SSRI that I will ever try. I got the "brain zaps" from that one and I've never had such an odd and disturbing effect off of a drug.

So I moved over to trying Remeron (an SDNRI I think...), Amyltriptaline (a trycrillic anti-depressant I think...) and your drug, Wellbutrin. The Remeron and Amyltrip. didn't work but the Wellbutrin has been a great drug for me. I've been on it for about 6 years now.

So the usual thing, everyone's body is different, your experience may be different than mine, I use it for chronic pain induced depression not just "depression", if there's much of a difference, blah blah blah, but here's my experience with this, in my opinion, very good drug.

It doesn't work long term for me. What I mean is that it works for around 9 - 12 months and then it just sort of dies out and I become depressed and even a little more unmotivated than I was when I previously was not on the drug. This has been something that I have for sure found to be true over and over again on Wellbutrin. Because of this I use it in an on for awhile, then off for awhile then on for awhile, then repeat kind of cycle. I will take it like I said for about 9 - 12 months and then stop for around 3 - 5 and then slowly start back up from 150mg XL once a day, moving up over time.

When I start the drug I start on the 150XL once a day in the morning. It's main effects are a slight decrease in depression, a very nice increase in motivation and easiness to be content with things and know things "will be ok" and "all things will work out" and "this too shall pass", that sort of thing.

I slowly move up the dosing, after a month or 2 I go up to either 2 150mg XL pills or 1 300mg XL pill. I never take the 300mg SR anymore or take 150mg XL 3 times a day, I take it once in the morning depending on how much I take and I generally don't go over 450 - 600mg's a month. If I'm on 2 150mg XL tablets I might space them out by taking 1 when I wake up and the second one about 4 hours later, but usually I'm taking both right in the beginning. 600mg's doesn't last for long - if I'm at this much I know it's time to cut back a little and stop.

Generally if I'm up to the point of taking say 600mg of Wellbutrin and abruptly stop, something I try to avoid, I find that I get some nasty but very manageable side effects. It's not at all like the other anti-depressant SSRI's or trycrillic anti-depressants. It doesn't work on Saratonin and I think this is the biggest reason why it's easier to "withdrawal" off of. Saratonin seems to be a sensitive brain chemical to change around quickly. Wellbutrin is an SDNRI, a Select Dopamine - Neprinepherine, Reuptake Inhibitor. It works on dopamine and neprinephrine. So a good idea would maybe be to take a look into these 2 chemicals and see what their functions are in the brain because this is what your body will have to re regulate when you get off of the Wellbutrin.

I find when I stop wellbutrin suddenly that I am unmotivated the most, secondly I would say I have a little bit more of a worry mind that likes to think in circles and it's harder to calm down and relax and know things will be ok. I tend to get a little bit of emotional sensitivity (crying would be easier when I'm quickly stopping Wellbutrin for instance), but this isn't that bad at all, the unmotivation seems to be the worst effect for me when stopping.

If I take a couple months and slowly bring my dose down to zero, it seems to not do anything at all except make me depressed like I was when I wasn't taking it at all. It's a depression from chronic pain though and I really think this is a different kind of depression. I wake up from pain and I go to sleep from being exhausted from pain. It doesn't have to really do with relationship problems or the inability to be happy. I can be happy it just is a shitty situation I'm in so I tend to battle trying to feel happy on a regular basis.

So sorry if I'm getting off track with the answer here, I'm very familiar with this drug and I like it a lot so I thought I'd give the long story. If you were on 600mg and you are now going to 0mg, yes, i'm almost positive you will feel some negative withdrawal effects most notable lack of motivation, worrying/monkey kinda mind, depression (but not severe), and a general feeling of fatigue. Also I find that I lose libido when I'm not on the drug. It's harder for me to get turned on and it's harder for me to maintain an erection. When I start back up on the drug it does the opposite.

If you were on say 150mg XL and are going to 0mg then your not going to feel that bad of withdrawal effects at all imo. You might feel lack of motivation, a slight loss of libido, a little bit of depression, but i doubt you will even get the worrying I was talking about.

It's a great drug I think and it's helped me a lot, took me awhile to find out how to work it best and I've been using it for a long time now and consider it a must for me to manage my chronic pain. If you have more specific questions please ask I'll be happy to answer. Hope it all goes well. Peace.

 

[Kledsky]

Wow that post turned out about 5 times longer than I thought it would...

In short if you're on 600mg a day you'll probably feel unmotivated, maybe worry a little and feel some depression but nothing major like withdrawaling off of an SSRI, very different drug.
If you're on 150mg XL 1nce a day then you'll probably not feel that much at all. If you want the long winded explanation go ahead and read my post above, I didn't mean to go so in depth I just like the drug a lot and have found a dosing scheme that works really well for me. Sorry for the book!

 

[mr. red]

I just switched from Wellbutrin XL to Effexor because the Wellbutrin wasn't helping me much. I took one pill (300 mg) every other day for a week then just quit. I didn't feel any disturbances or discomfort. As long as you're not taking massive doses, you should be alright.

 

[PinK~cloud]

Thank you for the thoughtful reply Kledsky. In my post I forgot to mention that my dose is one 300mg xr tablet a day. About 10 days ago I ran out of my xr tablets and was lucky enough to find an old bottle of 150mg regular tablets in my house. It was my only option for a while because the doctor has been less than cooperative, despite the fact that wellbutrin is unscheduled and that I reported how profoundly it's been affecting my life in a good way.

When I started taking the 150mg regular tablets 2x a day, I noticed that I felt more emotional and was much more cranky than I had been in months. This may be attributed to a number of things, like the pills being from 2008, or uneven levels of bupropion (a regular tablet 2x a day more than likely leaves me either high or low amounts of it in my bloodstream throughout the day, as opposed to the XR tablet's steady release), or forgetting to take the pills at the same times each day, etc. But regardless, I certainly felt a dramatic change since I discontinued the XR pills. I was able to use the 150s 2x a day for a little over a week before I ran out.

From what I gathered from the posts, are the "withdrawals" from rapidly stopping pretty much just fatigue, emotional instability, etc? Basically, I want to know if I'm in any REAL danger while I wait for a refill?



On a final note, I wanted to say that I'm happy wellbutrin has worked so well for you. It seems like there are so many people out there who have had negative reactions to bupropion. It always surprises me to read negative reports because I have undergone remarkable changes the last few months.

Here's a short list of all Wellbutrin's helped with:
-First and foremost, bupropion was the thing that finally helped me let go of amphetamine (adderall) use. I was using speed chronically to fight fatigue, attention problems, depression, etc. Wellbutrin has made the recovery process (dealing with months of EXTREME fatigue, moderate depression, lack of motivation to do much of anything, and withdrawal from my social life) manageable in ways I never thought possible.
-Life long attention problems. I've always had ADD, which I didn't address until college since I was able to scrape by everything else. I started on ritalin in my first year of school, and eventually changed to adderall. Long story short, the meds initially dealt with concentration issues, motivation, spaciness, etc...but as time went on adderall lost it's magic, and ironically, I became even more mentally discombobulated, more fatigued, and more carefree than I was BEFORE ever starting it. Wellbutrin on the other hand has managed my ADD issues in a truly sustainable manner; despite being "weaker" than adderall (in that there's no noticeable extreme concentration highs), it helps more because it manages my symptoms 24/7, and there's no ups and downs between doses.
-Lastly, I can actually say I'm happy now. I want to improve my body, my mind, future, and life in ways I have not experienced before.

Anyway, I'll stop blabbering now about all the good wellbutrin's done for me. I'd suggest it to anyone wanting to get the "spark" back in their lives. Though it should be said that people with anxiety based issues wouldn't do well on the stuff. My brother took wellbutrin for a while. He's always been a worrysome guy, someone who tends to get stuck on issues. Although wellbut helped with mild depression, the anxiety he eventually experienced ended up outweighing the positives.

Thanks for the help guys.

 

[prayersfor.rain]

Over Christmas/New Years I decided to cut my wellbutrin dose in half and only take 150mg/day to "see what would happen" (stupid stupid stupid). For two weeks I had absolutely no energy, I missed work the whole time because I could barely move and I was really nauseated and drunk the entire time.

My mom figured out what I was doing and made me go back to my normal dose. And then I felt fine again. Unfortunately my doc seems to think that maybe it (the ONLY antidepressant I've tried that's worked for me) is not working so well anymore and instead of increasing my dose she wants to switch me to something else.
I'm really bummed out about it. I really like wellbutrin.

 

[cripkeeper]

I was on wellbutrin for about a year and just stopped cause I didn't think it was needed anymore, I didn't have any problems. I remember I took a pill 3x daily, can't remember the dose. Your probably be fine!

 

[Captain.Heroin]

I randomly discontinued bupropion without any negative side effects, although your mileage may vary. I am going to venture a guess and say you are probably fine if you haven't taken any in a few days.

I am glad to hear it was a medication which worked well for you.

 

[cripkeeper]

Not to get off topic, but I'd like to add wellbutrin the the only anti-deppresent that I noticed help.