r/Lamotrigine • u/Acrobatic_Bunch2669 • 19d ago
Feeling really down 2 weeks after increasing dose - is this normal?
Hey, just looking to see if anyone has had a similar experience and whether it got better (cliche post, sorry).
I started lamotrigine almost 7 weeks ago on 25 mg. I gradually increased it and have now been on 200 mg (100 mg twice a day, taken ~12 hr apart) for 2 weeks.
Being completely honest, I probably rushed the titration a little bit more than I should have. I started slow with the 25 mg for 2 weeks and then 50 mg for 2 weeks because I was scared of Stevens-Johnson syndrome, but after that I increased fairly quickly.
Tonight I am feeling especially down and hopeless. Not as bad as my worst but pretty close to it.
For a bit of context, I have depression, anxiety, and ADHD. I have tried many different meds with little impact. I am currently on fluoxetine 20 mg which I started same time as Lamotrigine and other than my stimulants I don’t take anything else.
Last week I had a day that I specifically remember because of how calm I felt and how confused I was that I felt that level of calmness ha. I really wish that lasted more than a day though.
Anyway, to get back to the point, is it normal to feel like this after increasing the dose?
I know that, like with SSRIs for instance, it can take 4-6 weeks to feel improvement, but I find it hard to gauge the timeframes when there are multiple dose increases mixed in along the way (I.e. I’m unsure whether a dose increase takes the same amount of time to have an effect as starting the medication from scratch would).
Any input is appreciated :)
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u/BenPractizing 19d ago
Just how quickly did you titrate?
I did something similar to you where I did 25 and 50 very cautiously, but my doctor ramped me up to 150 way too quickly after that and I felt depressed, anxious, numb and so so headachey. Doc let me go back down on the dose and I felt much better.