Bipolar Type II Support Group

has anyone come off Trazodone and lamitical if so what are the side effects my pdoc took me off them yesterday

No side effects coming off of Trazadone, and I just stopped cold from taking 400 mg a night. If Lamotrigine is the generic for Lamicital I've just started taking that last month, so don't know about that one.

thanks

I only took Trazadone to sleep for about 2 weeks and it didn't work very well. I've been on Lamictal gen. for over 7 years. Have stopped it once cold turkey and wouldn't with that on my enemy. That being said it's been the only med that we haven't changed since that time. I was really stable for 5 years a couple bumps nothing major. I am now recovering from a major crash but it had nothing to do with my meds. My work situation, stress, unreal demands by my supervisor & mangers. I just couldn't handle it no matter what we tried. I'm back to work now and the only thing that seemed to help was going up to 225mg on the Lamictal.

Good luck with it, I think its a great med.

I have been on Lamictal for 4 years and only recently my doc tried to ween me off over a gradual process. I was originally on 250mg/day. I went down to 225mg for 2 weeks, then 200mg for two weeks, the she thought since I was doing well, let's go down a bit faster. So I went down by 25mg/week for 4 weeks, bringing me down to 100mg. By the end of the 3rd week I was losing it. I had severe mood swings- I mean LITERALLY crying one minute and laughing the next. (I am rapid cycling this was uber rapid cycling). I was on the verge of suicide a few times that last week, actually ended up in hospital against my will. Needless to say, doc upped my lamotrigine again pretty quickly. I have been back on 200mg for a while now, we stopped it there this time to see if I would adjust.

I am also on Lithium though, which is the reason we were trying to take me off the lamotrigine. We were just going to have me on one, but it turns out lamotrigine is not the one to take me off of. Now that I've sort of stabilized for a while, hopefully we can take me off the damn lithium now.

I don't know what dose you're on but I would NOT recommend stopping cold turkey, especially if you've been on it for a while.

If it were my and had to go off or down on Lamictal again it would be no more than 25mg every 4-6 weeks. any faster than that is just a nightmare. This is some serious $h1t to come off of. I got off Xanax easier than Lamictal. Not to mention that the withdrawal lasted almost the full month I was off of it. I swore I would never go back on it but its the only mood stabilizer that works for me.

Titration is increasing or lowering doses of medications up or down in small increments, up to get the maximum effect avoiding many unpleasant side effects, or down to reduce withdrawals.

Unfortunately a lot of pdocs don't recognize some of the meds that need to be titrated down on. SSRI's, SNRI's can be hell to come off of and its only been in the past 5 years that pdocs finally acknowledged that these meds cause withdrawals. Instead of withdrawal they call it Discontinuation Syndrome don't know what the difference is except it sounds nicer.