Are antidepressants off-limits?

Thank you for your input. Surprisingly, Lithium has never come up at any of my hospital stays, from my past pdoc, or my current NP. I wonder why that is, since it seems to be a popular med. But from my understanding, weight gain will happen and I'm not going to take anything that causes weight gain, I have gained enough. I have a therapy appointment later today, so I will bring these up. I think I'm leaning more towards Zoloft, since weight loss is a possible side-effect, and weight gain was not listed. I am currently on 400 mg Lamotrigine and I have been told it doesn't work for mania, so I don't really know if I can even get an antidepressant, which sucks. I could care less if I get manic, as I like being manic, but this is frowned upon. Which also sucks.

Yeah Lithium is an old drug, but it's only one of 2 drugs that have proved effective enough for FDA approval in the treatment of bi-polar depression. (The other is Lamictal I believe). Lithium works for both mania and depression. The problem is the dose has to be just right since it can be toxic. And it can have long term effects like kidney issues if not monitored closely.

There seems to be a catch-22 with most drugs -- either they work really well but have tons of side-effects (lithium, zyprexa) or they have very few side-effects yet don't work for a lot of people (Trileptal, etc.)

Antidepressants are very off limits for me. They make me go NUTS (intense mania followed by an ugly crash and burn.) Lithium treats my depression though thankfully, and very well at that. It does take about 6 months for the total treatment/effect to really be noticeable.

About these 2 posts above, I don't think Lithium is a route I want to take. This is why my NP doesn't like Depakote (which I was on for a year) because of all the blood work and monitoring you need. Hopefully my 200 mg increase of Lamotrigine/Lamictal will help in the next few weeks, and my NP said she can raise it to over 400 mg if need be. But I'm still going to try for an antidepressant. As I mentioned in my OP, I was on Wellbutrin, and that didn't make me manic, but it did make me borderline agoraphobic. I just feel like I'm out options at this point, because I flat-out refuse to take anymore anti-psychotics.

I was actually on Lamictal first, it's a great drug.. and it worked really well. I had an allergic reaction to it sadly But yeah that's what I was on first.

Not that life-threatening rash, I hope. I'm sort of nervous about that with my increase.

Jellybeanery wrote:Not that life-threatening rash, I hope. I'm sort of nervous about that with my increase.

Actually it may have went there if I hadn't acted immediately. I woke up one night itching ALL over. Gave it a day and it continued...I knew about the rash and said screw it. I called my doc and he said stop asap. X.x

To be fair, I itch from everything. The list of meds that make me itch is pretty long. But yeah I was sad Lamictal didn't work for me. It's the better of the 2 drugs actually proven to work :/

I'm sorry That sucks. Hopefully what you are on now is helping though.

Jellybeanery wrote:I'm sorry That sucks. Hopefully what you are on now is helping though.

It definitely is a good alternative, and thanks JB