600mg worked well at first but after 2 months i need something else it does not work for mr anymore. I panic alot and get very upset . I never seem to be calm.

I took abilify for two months and I gained 25 pounds. My doc just put me on Geodon. I also take zoloft and lamictal. Do I have to take Geodon and just take trileptal instead? I’m sick of all the side effects and I used to take trileptal years ago and nothing bad happened. I just don’t want to take any antipsychotic meds due to all the side effects. Anyone have any suggestions?

I was diagnosed with bipolar II 3 or 4 years ago and was put on lithium which I found I could not tolerate. Went through a lot of meds and now am on 300 mg of Lamictal, 5-10 mg of Zyprexa (and have gained 30 lbs.), 75 mg of Zoloft, and 12.5 mg of Ambien. Lately, my dr. prescribed 300-600mg of Trileptal to help with the anger/rage that will erupt. I find though that it makes me feel like a zombie and have not been all that compliant taking it. If I force my way through with it, will that side-effect ease up?

I was just wondering. I have bipolar..I am currently taking 50mg of topamax. I have really bad anxiety…controling my freaking life basically. My doctor wont give me something because of my “substance abuse history”. I was thinking of klonopin. Mind you I was only smoking weed. Is klonopin and Topamax a good combination? I want to go to my doctor prepared and informed. I cant handle this anxiety crap much longer…please help. Thanks.

My husband was diagnosed with bipolar 1 in August. Previously he had been diagnosed with cyclothymia. He was hospitalized for 10 days when he was diagnosed and put on Trileptal (300mg 3x per day). A week after getting out of the hospital, he got a really bad migraine and cut his dosage to 2x per day without consulting the nurse in charge of his case. Initially she told me that dosage would never get him stable but after seeing him again said that was enough. Since then it seems to me that he is superficially stable, but still not fully stable especially in relation to our son and me. He says he is concerned about not allowing the meds to make him lose the good things he got from his full-blown mania such as greater clarity. Any thoughts on whether the Trileptal is right for him? Thanks.

After 20 years of cycling depression, I was finally diagnosed with Bipolar II last year. I have taken a series of anti-depressants for the last 7 years, most recently Wellbutrin – they seem to work for awhile and then don’t seem to help much. While trying to learn more about Bipolar II, I kept reading that anti-depressants actually aggrivate symptoms in some people. So I have recently gotten off the Wellbutrin and don’t seem to be missing it at this point.

I tried lamictal and it was amazing, worked wonders for me. But sadly I developed the allergic rash, so had to quit taking it. I also tried Abilify and Geodon – which both had such horrific side effects I was rendered completely non-functional. I just can’t seem to tolerate the mood stablizers. This week my doctor prescribed Trileptal and I’m about to start that. I so hope it will help. It is sad to finally know what I have and not be able to tolerate any of the meds to treat it.

I’m bipolar1 and was on 50 mgs lamictle and 400 seroqual for 6 months. Saw doc yesterday and she took me off lamictle (noticed side effects) and has added 300 mgs trileptal and seroquel down to 300 (I was drooling!) OH, also .25 xanax. My question is “when will an anti depressant be added in treatment? Does that come in after the moods are stabalized? I was on Prozac for 19 years until I went manic in October 08 after death of my brother (I was caretaker) Eventhough I feel calmer I still feel that down low depression. So if I feel calm but still depressed, shouldm’t I be on an anti depressant? Thanks for any info you can give me. I asked the doc yesterday and she said what I’m taking are for depression – very comfusing. Loretta PS I was told by doc that 19 years ago all they has was prozac?

I take 600mg of Trileptal 2x a day and 100 mg of zoloft 1x a day. Trileptal has to be taken 2x a day due to short half life. I was also told anything under 600 mg is not a theraputic dose. I get a dizzy high feeling when I take my dose in the morning on an empty stomach with coffe, but am ok with that. Lamictal keeps may anger and anxiety in check; keeps mixed episodes and rapid cycling at bay. Those of you who have yet to find the right meds, don’t lose hope, just keep working with your doctor, but also educate yourself. I had one psychiatrist prescribe a medicine to be taken 1x a day, only to find out that if I did not take it 2x a day, it would not do any good. Doctors make mistakes too. You have to study up and research; you know you and your illness better than anyone.

Hi all! I have been on at least 10 different medications in 10 years, and the best and by far most tolerable (though not ideal) has been Trileptal. This has kept me together! For two years now I have been very close to having only minor mood swings with this medication, and I take the maximum allowable dosage. No problems besides dizziness, focus and concentration issues, which in balance, are not too hard to deal with, considering the alternatives!

I was just diagnosed with Bipolar and ADHD. I am on Trileptal and feel great other than if I even dare to lay down I am OUT!!!!! No problem sleeping now that for sure. My question is though any one experiance weight gain on this medicine????

I take 1500-1800 mg daily. Originally diagnosed for BP II, I was rediagnosed explosive dis. and with this med, all others were dropped. The side effects are experienced as above, but the benefits outweigh the downside. Just be careful of the hyponatremia… it is wicked of you overdose. ouch.

I feel so ‘normal’ since 2005. Few blood tests.

I have just been diagnosed as being bipolar as well as having borderline personality disorder. I have been taking 20 mg of paxil a day for months now and my current DR took me off of that and put me on 300mg of trileptal a day. I am currently struggling with what they call paxil withdrawl and i feel terrible. I’ve been on the trileptal for going on two weeks and notice no change in how I feel what so ever. Should I give it more time? Could the paxil withdrawl be keeping me from feeling the effect of it?

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

o yea just wanted to let u know that ive took the medications individually not all at once. thanks. please help

I have had bipolar for what seems like forever- 20 years. I have tried the majority of meds out there. Seriously. Now I take the following regimen which seems to work but lately I have been tired. Bone tired. At night 1200mg trileptal, 400mg seroquel xr, 200mg zoloft, 1mg klonopin 2x a day. In addition to this I take atrovent and flovent for asthma, lovastatin for high cholesterol, and finally 1.0 estrogen for a total hysterectomy. I am only 41. I look 30 easily. I am starting to think all these meds are preserving me or pickling me. I have suffered severe rapid cycling in the past, have suffered from severe episodes of self harm, have been hospitalized twice. Trileptal and seroquel are the glue that keep me together. I am convinced zoloft is now just part of my make up having been on it for 15 years. Seroquel for 12 years. I have learned to just deal with the tiredness because what else can I do. I highly reccommend trileptal at a higher dose though it will take your body time to aclimate. I have taken lithium in all its forms and depakote as well- both were awful when it came to weight gain and tremors with the lithium. I have also taken risperedone which will make you feel like some one is stomping on your frontal lobe. It takes to find the combo that works for you but hang in there because you will. I mean really, what is the alternative. Good luck

soo. im on 1800 whatever it is for this stuff. and it does absolutely nothing to me. ive never tried any of medication. but this doesnt do anything to me. i constantly flip on people. and truthfully i wasnt this bad before i was on the medication. also, my doctor is stupid. i had a proffesional diagnose me with adhd. then the doctor said i was bipolar instead after asking 5 questions.

This is awful! I would imagine it is because you stopped abruptly though I am not a professional and have no idea – just speaking from personal experience. Personally, once I’ve had to miss, it’s taken a couple of days for my body to “right” itself…..let’s hope it’s the same with yours. Good luck – and work with your pharmacy so you don’t have to go through this again. Surely they could have gotten some from you from another pharmacy?! How scary! Take care!!

Hey, I have been trieptal since December 600-mg bedtime 300-mg morning 150-mg afternoon also take xanex 2-mg bedtime I think now I am starting to feel better the racing thoughts are better and I am able to be more present and work on issues in my life with my t. Still not sure what my diagnosis is this time I have been in and out of treatment for most of my life for depression and I truly think now I am on the right medication first time ever even people where I work have noticed changes in me (which is a little scary) they say I just look and act so much happier and I do feel that way I hope it will continue and with my t I can truly make positive changes to stay this way…..

Bare with me, I ramble!

I am 36, bipolar, and began treatment about two years ago. I take 1200 Trileptal (600 morning, 600 night) and 150 seroquel at night only. I also take lisinopril and omega-3 fishies pills in the morning and evening. (I read a lot of summaries of inconclusive studies, but I don’t get enough anyways so why not?:)

When I was diagnosed, I was in the most intense crisis of my life, and I have had several periods of severe depression and manic episodes (That I had no clue of at the time, it just felt normal), so it was very hard for me as I know it has been for all of you as well. I had a fantastic job, a year old relationship with a truly wonderful woman and human, and everything was just as good as it had ev er been. I had been on 200 zoloft daily, but as most of us know, antidepressants alone can be BAD for some bipolars. I was starting to feel increasingly “wrong”. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was really going crazy so I discontinued the zoloft cold turkey (since my doctor at the time assured me it was a small dosage).

Over the next two weeks I crashed completely. The only reason I was not hospitalized was due to my relationship with my father and brother. They know my craziness well, and even they were scared for me, and a little bit of me. I have never been violent towards people, rather the opposite, but I was beginning to break things.

After initial dioagnosis came the medication rollercoaster. Luckily I was not on that ride too long before finding a decent combo that works ok for now. I was started on depakote (I think 600 or 1200). I had also recently started going back to school. I had a bad reaction. I dropped my classes and at the worst of it, I pushed my brother through a screen door and down three steps. He did instigate the conflict, but I took it way past the line. I was then put on tegratol since my doctor knew of trileptal and its relative safety.

Over the next few months I had to leave my job, move my girlfriend out and deal with all of the side effects of the different meds. I ranged from 300 to 600 seroquel, since it is said that the minimum effective dosage of seroquel is 300. This is not true in my case, and anything 200 or more makes the skin on my face start to flake off rapidly resulting in spoltchy irritations.

Two years in and I have been fairly stable for at least six months. In my case I have not yet recovered to the point of being able to work, but I can live more than just a day at a time, and I don’t feel like being dead would be preferrable to life anymore.

There are so many variations of bipolar, and the new DSM 2012 or 2013 will have many more definitions than the previous version, which will refine the available treatments for specific subtypes of the illness. There is a very high treatment rate for bipolars through medication, moreso than most other illnesses in the world, but due to side effects and mania withdrawl, too many of us just stop treatment altogether and end up on the news ten years after they “cured” themselves with a candle.

I am absolutely not dismissing alternative medicine, or marijuana as a medicine or whatnot, but LOTS of bipolars seem to think that just omega threes will fix it. It will not.

My baby brother of 26 is walso bipolar and had a much worse hand dealt to him than me. I heard from him this week and he now faces more than fifty years of concurrent jail time due to a mania fueled drunken drive that ended as badly as that scenario implies. He refused to take meds anymore. My heart hurt when he told me he just “smoked a lot of pot” a week before his episode. I love weed! seriously I really do, but it is NOT a cure for bipolar, just a really bad band aid.

DON’T GIVE UP!!!!!!!!!

Find what works and makes you FEEL BETTER! There is no cure for bipolar, just as there is no cure for being a scumbag or a-hole, but at least we have an excuse and a way to make it better.

EAT RIGHT! You really are what you eat.

SLEEP! Without regular sleep there is no hope for stability, so find out what works for you, this is a hard one for us.

KEEP ALL MEDICAL APPOINTMENTS! There have been times that I started on a downward spiral and I kept from falling in just thinking that I was only a few days from my next appointment. If you feel uncomfortable with your doctor, change if you can.

LIVE AND FEEL! Stop for fi8ve minutes a day in a spot that makes you feel peaceful. There is a spot on the side of my house, just a good view of a few nice wild plants and some trees in the view. It helps.

EDUCATE!! Educate yourself and any family/friends who care to learn. Sometimes just having understanding of some specific symptom or problem can stop it from becomming huge. I have avoided what I’m sure would be episodic times by stopping in my tracks and recognizing what was happening as a symptom.

YOU ARE NOT ALONE!! 99% of the doctors you see want nothing more than the alleviations of your symptoms and a way for you to get better. Try not to think of your health care as an adversary. You cannot heal if you are fighting every therapy.

I would not be able to communicate these thoughts effectively without my meds. I would not be looking forward to tomorrow without my support. Take a class, find a bipolar support group, or find something to do that makes you feel valuable. To those of you who are just starting to learn what it is to be bipolar, keep hope, it won’t let you down. To all of you old hats out there, thanks for sticking with it and helping to define the newer and safer treatments I now enjoy.

I hope everyone out there finds what it is they are looking for. Enjoy this life, even if something better waits for us afterwards, this one is still a total gift:)

I’ve been taking Trileptal for 10 days. I’m interested in what people experience as they adjust to it.

I took 300mg a day at night for the first week and now, the second week, I’m taking 600mg. 300mg in the morning, 300mg at night.

I don’t have a lot of data after only 10 days. But I am certainly noticing things. The very first day, I felt fabulous. It now seems like I sleep well every other night. I have noticed a couple days of feeling blue/melancholy–the feeling just seems to be there; it doesn’t seem connected to some specific thing I’m upset about. It’s odd.

The number one thing I have noticed, and the number one reason why this was prescribed for me, is that I’m not overwhelmed by everything.

Yesterday, the day I was feeling the blue mood most severely, I felt a little overwhelmed. But today, I’m back to feeling pretty good, and not overwhelmed.

Thoughts on what you’ve experienced as you get accustomed to it? Thanks a lot.

I’ve been taking 1800 mgs (a “slug” as my doc once put it) for 7 or 8 years. It was the first medication I took after my initial diagnosis. I researched it and asked for it as it seemed to be the drug with the lightest touch, which was where I preferred to begin this grand experiment. Luckily, the first time I took it, I noticed a major improvement within days. It made it possible for me to sleep normally, as well as concentrate better (related to the sleep, I suppose). I started at 600 mg, I think. My dosage as edged up over the years, and I added Lamictal which seemed to help with the depression side of things.

I take 300 mg, three times a day, and the other 900 mg at bedtime, along with 100 mg of the Lamictal. I’m out within an hour. Staying awake all night would be a reliable state otherwise.

Depending on how I’m feeling on a given day, 300 mgs of Trileptal may be barely noticeable, or there may be anything from a rapid calming effect to outright sleepiness. Occasionally I will get blurred vision. That may last minutes or hours. This side effect seems to appear under somewhat randomly but high stress may trigger it (a lot of coffee will, too). Early on, I actually went to emergency once, not understanding that blurred vision was a side effect (that it said so right there on the bottle seems to have escaped me–inattention anyone?), and the doctor there gave me an expensive and unnecessary CAT scan.

I’m pretty much at the max dose of Trileptal so as, or if, its effectiveness starts to fade, I’ll have to try something else, or notch up the Lamectal.

Fairly often I skip 300 mg, when I need a bit of mania to get through the day, or I’ll just forget to take it. There’s no short-term a negative effect. Pop 300 mg, and the manic edge will fade. One of the advantages of this drug, from my POV, is that it works its way through your system quite quickly. There’s a downside to that as well, or course.

I consider my experience with Trileptal positive. There are few side effects, it works quickly, and has the general effect of lessoning symptoms.

Also: I take the generic Oxcarbazepine. I’ve found that I have to check the manufacturer. Some versions will give me a splitting headache. Others, not. I don’t know if it’s the fillers or what but this sensitivity has become more acute over time. With Lamitcal, it’s name brand or nothing. I used to be able to take a generic but no more.

I was diagnosed to be suffering from bipolar disorder six month ago.At the same time I suffered from social anxiety. My doctor prescribed me antidepressants at the beginning I felt happy and but still suffered anxiety. After three months he Prescribed me trileptal and its after that Amazingly I lost my anxiety . I saw in wikepedia that trileptal is good for bipolar with anxiety. That is certainly true. I now feel very relaxed .my anxiety level seems to be zero. I think trileptal is best for some one with both bipolar and anxiety. Although I was prescribed lithium before trileptal I did not saw my anxiety going away at all

I took one 150mg Trileptal, and was completely knocked out within 30 minutes. Horrific headaches, blurred vision, vertigo, facial numbness and welling, and vomiting ensued. I slept for nearly four days, and when I got up, still had massive headaches and dizziness. It’s been over a week, and I’m still dizzy, have a blunt headache, and have no feeling in my face and it’s still swollen. Trilleptal is pure poison for me. I only took one pill, and I can not function, feel, think, or live. It’s pure hell!!!!!

I had been taking 600mg trileptal for 6 months with great success in stabilization of my bipolar disorder. That is until I started feeling quite lethargic and with lots of headaches. I was sent immediately from my doctor’s office to emergency room where I was diagnosed with hyponatremia (low sodium). My primary classified it as SIADH (syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone hypersecretion). My psychiatrist immediately took me off of the trileptal (and the effexor too, because as all those with bipolar should know…you can’t just have an anti-depressant without the mood stabilizer). So I went off the trileptal exactly as my psychiatrist prescribed-cold turkey. 2 days later, I had the first seizure of my life. And within the next 2 days, I had had about 70 (seventy) more seizures. I was placed on depakote and klonopin as anti-seizure medications. Urinary incontinence, and having seizures while walking and falling on your head, or seizing out of bed and falling on the floor and hitting yourself so hard that you bleed are just not fun. I have been seizure free for 24 hours now. Hopefully I can save at least one person’s life with my story. If so, this will all be worth it. I just wonder if I’ll ever be allowed to return to work and drive again (I walk patients on mechanical ventilators in the ICU as a doctor of physical therapy). I don’t know what I would do with my life if I had to start over.

I took Geodon for 5yrs but had to stop because it gave me Tardive dyskenisia. Now taking Trilepta but causes insomnia. need help. I want meds for bi-polar that does not cause weight gain