Trileptal?

Has anyone here taken Trileptal? If so, how has it been? Any good effects? Thanks for input.

Camiblue,
I've been taking Trileptal for about a month now (450mg daily) and it has really worked wonders for me. I've been diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder for about the last 10 years or so and been on every anti-depressant on the market, with really no relief of my depression/anxiety. Last month, during a particulary bad emotional period where I was majorly depressed and very high level of anxiety and racing thoughts, my pdoc put me on Trileptal. The best way I can describe my thoughts before taking the med was that I had positive thoughts and negative thoughts that were like competing racecars on a racetrack. Within 3 hours of taking my first dose of Trileptal (150mg), the negative car, for the FIRST time in my ENTIRE life simply disappeared. It literally hit me like a ton of bricks. My racing thoughts were so bad that I would sit in front of the tv and not be able to listen to what was on the screen because my mind was a million miles away... and then, suddenly, I realized that I was actually PAYING ATTENTION to the TV.

Over a 2 week period from my first dose, the doctor had me increase the dose gradually to my current 450mg per day.

If I had two words to describe what this med has given me it would be this: calm and clarity.

I have NEVER thought so clearly in my life and have all but stopped having eggagerated positive or negative reactions to everything in my life. Having the medicine work in such a drastic way was both a relief and troubling. The relief was that for the FIRST time in my life, a psy drug has WORKED. The troubling part is that if a mood-stabilizer worked, then, odds are, I have a mood disorder that the medicine is correcting. I'm 42, so it was bit of a hard thing to swallow that I've lived for 42 years with a chemical imbalance that caused me not only to perceive, but react incorrectly; made me wonder how different my life could have been if I had this medication decades earlier. Fortunately, with my new sense of balance came the ability to realize much more quickly than usual that I can't change the past and must count my blessings for getting the problem corrected now and having the rest of my life to live to the fullest, free of my former mental prison.

No drug can work miracles, but I have to say, after all my experience with anti-depressants, that THIS medication had a DEFINITE positive effect. Not all of my progress has been due to this medication.... I've worked VERY hard in therapy and on my own to make concrete changes to my life and way of thinking. But this medication definitely pushed my level of progress to the most I've ever achieved. I've not had any side effects that I can tell right now. I am monitoring my weight as I had a dramatic weight gain a couple of years ago from medication. Lost all that weight and back to normal; so far so good a month in on Trileptal.

Hope this helps
-Koshka