Posted by Cybele on September 7, 2005, at 19:57:50
I've been on Lamictal for 3.5 weeks now. I am currently on 50mg, but start a week of 75mg on Friday. I have been dx with BP-III (basically, dysthymia with one episode of AD-induced hypomania 10 years ago and currently double depression). My PDOC thinks Lamictal will be perfect for me. My main depressive symptoms are difficulty concentrating, low energy, and just feeling flat and uninterested in things. He also prescribed Klonopin, which I've only take a couple times. It makes me sleepy.
Here's my problem. The AD effect of Lamictal is not working yet, but I started becoming easily angered by my kids. I'm not normally like this at all. I usually keep a sense of humor about things. Lately I will go from OK to angry and yelling in about 2 seconds, mostly when they (ages 6 and 8) ignore me.
For example, tonight I let my 8-year old play on the computer until 7:15 as long as he finished his whomework and ate his dinner first, which he did. I told him that at 7:15 he and his brother would need to take a shower. At 7:00 I gave him a 15 minute warning. At 7:10 I gave him a warning that he had only 5 more minutes on the computer. I gave him a 1 minute warning at 7:14. I asked him to log off and power down at 7:15. He started arguing with me that I wasn't being fair, etc. etc. I restated the terms of our agreement. He sulked and got off the computer and went and turned on the TV. I told him that it was shower time, not TV time, and he argued with me that he never gets to watch TV. I just lost it and starting yelling at him. My hubby got the boys in the shower and left to go work out, giving me a big hug. I reached for a glass to pour some water for myself and thought better of putting glass in my hand because I felt like dashing it against the wall. I got a bottle of water instead, and hurtled that against the wall.
My children are not in any danger, other than being upset because their mother yelled at them. I hate that I yelled at them, because I know how damaging that can be to kids to be yelled at. But I just felt so much anger at being ignored over and over.
Will Lamictal do that to a person? Or could it just be a sign of being in a major depression for 2 months and feeling stress from everything that is not getting done in my life? I just took a Klonopin and sat down to post this. Now I'm off to get the kids to bed. Deep breaths...!
Any Lamictal success stories? My older half-sister is on 200mg Lamictal for BP-I, and feels that it has helped her a lot. Her psych. problems have been much worse than mine over teh years, but she is doing fine now.
poster:Cybele
thread:552016
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050901/msgs/552016.html