Originally Posted by
Qvazzy
i've been on it for a couple of years.. im on 600mg now and i think it does help to stabilize my mood a little but not that much..
600mg seems like quite a bit. Over here in the US, the max dosage tends to be 400mg, considering all anti-depressant qualities end around 200-250mg. But anywho, that decision is for your doc to make.
Currently I'm on 200mg and have been for six months. It's often used for BP-II [considering the depression factor], sometimes BPI, and even Major Depression. I think it's a medication that is better utilized with another medication. It tends to do less of a job by itself. It seems to be the better of the mood stabilizers when it comes to depression, but like I said above, the antidepressant properties end around the 200-250mg range. After that, it's pretty pointless to increase for depression alone.
For Bipolar, I've heard of people having to go up to 400mg. That seems to be the cut-off point. If it doesn't work well enough then, there's really no point in increasing.
For me, I experienced initial hair loss for the first two or so months of taking Lamictal. I asked the woman who cut my hair what that was all about, and she said that sometimes when you start new meds your hair goes into shock. It makes sense considering everything you put into your body is deposited in your hair. This includes medication. After those initial months, my hair quit falling out and I'm growing a little back. I didn't have bald spots or anything though. My hair just got a bit thinner. This is a rare side effect though, not even listed on the P.I. sheet. I normally get really strange and ****ed up side effects, so don't worry too much about this :3
Other than that, I had no other symptoms. No weight gain, sedation/insomnia, etc. Some people do experience some severe headaches when increasing the medication, but those go away once you're at a steady dose.
Increasing slowly is the key. A responsible and educated doctor will know this. If you increase or even decrease Lamictal too quickly, you're at risk for developing Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, a potientially life threatening rash. It's somewhat rare, but not rare enough for them not to put a large "black box" warning on the P.I. sheet for it. The rash becomes sorely obvious, very widespread. You will know if you have it, and the best thing to do is call your doctor who prescribed you the meds or go straight to the ER. I recommend doing both, considering you're gonna end up in the ER anyway if you have any kind of rash on Lamictal. Most of the time they take you straight off the Lamictal and put you on some steroid medications to fight off the rash. Once you get Stevens-Johnson from Lamictal, there's really no way you can take the medication again. But I stress, this will probably never happen to you. Like I said, a slow increase is
very important.
My final words. This medication helps me, but I honestly think it didn't help when I was taking it alone. Once my psychiatrist added Lithium back into the mix with the Lamictal, I started experiencing great results. I also find it's helpful if I split up my 200mg daily dose into 100mg in the morning and 100mg at night. Spreading out the dosage seems to make the medication more available throughout my body over the course of the day. You may have to be patient. This medication takes quite a while to stabilize moods, and even then your moods won't be completely stable sometimes. You will probably still have relapses and fluctuations. I still have depressive states and moments where I feel as if I'm fighting off a mania, but the severity is normally low. Don't worry too much though, just notify your doctor about it if your moods are hard to control.
