Posted by tom2228 on August 21, 2010, at 16:14:16
In reply to Re: GOODbye depakote!!!, posted by Zyprexa on August 19, 2010, at 22:15:32
> I was on a much higher dose of depakote for about a year. 1000mg or something. Just stoped it cold turky with no problems at all. Infact I felt better off it.
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> So good luck to you!
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> Are you switching to anouther med? If not you may end up only feeling good for a while and then back to feeling bad. So watch out for that.So I'm really bad about following up on my own posts quickly -- not following through on things, thats what's really annoying about my ADHD..
Thanks for the support guys. No not switching yet. But yea I understand exactly what you're saying, I actually did type out a reply to Phillipa's first post that it may seem, and many people falsely believe -- the hard thing about mood disorders especially bipolars -- that they are feel much better when they quit their meds. So you have to take their accounts with a grain of salt because most of the time the "better" is very transient.
Bipolars are notorious for stopping their meds and feeling like life is so much better off their meds.. sadly the brain is playing a trick as stopping mood stabilizers sets off a neurochemical storm that the brain's receptors aren't used to handling -- the meds dampen excessive neural activity. Often the disorder is already back once the meds stop b/c a lot of people go manic.
I believe I definitely had a reaction to stopping depakote.. where my brain was much more activated all of a sudden, lasted for a couple of days. I seem to have calmed down past 2 days so I think it was the depakote.
But i definitely got hypomanic-y... staying up almost all night, taking long faaast drives, drinking and going wild, and uhm had a casual encounter or 2 . to say the very least hypersexuality.
Complicating that is that a week and a half ago I switched from Vyvanse (d-amp) to Desoxyn (d-methamphetamine). I have finally found my ADHD med after 8(?) tries, it really is the best for symptom control. 99% side-effect free... except a very pronounced, or maybe RETURNED (i am an 18-year-old guy) libido! Far less anxiety than d-amp.. the difference is you CAN inhibit your behavior if you choose, instead of the medicine inhibiting YOU. So you can be your rather uninhibited self...
I'm also on MAOIs just switched from Parnate (25mg) to Marplan earlier this week. The switch was right around the time the depakote "episode" was happening so it could be a factor too.
So Desoxyn 5-7.5mg and Marplan 20mg.
Treating (!! formerly-)treatment resistant atypical depression, social anxiety, severe ADHD combined, and some type of bipolarity... my docs have just treated it not specified. i'm getting neuropsych testing for school (need it for university stim scripts) so hopefully will get to the bottom of what type of bipolarity is going on.
But yea at the moment I am not treating the bipolar/ mood instability bit.. we're seeing how I do off depakote now that i've switched to more tolerable stim and AD. also waiting to gauge my marplan efficacy because the next options we're thinking about are lithium or thyroid, which would augment both depression and help mood stability.
SO has anybody used lithium amongst other mood stabilizers? is Li+ less of a "zombifying" antimanic than depakote?Also does has anyone had any experience with those + stimulants, like which one dampens amphetamines' effects more and the like. I found depakote really attenuated the amp's effects on energy, alertness, well-being, stimulation.. just leaving most of the focusing effects (though slightly dampened).
I read that depakote actuallly increases gene transcription of the DAT, increasing DAT density.. which is basically a direct interference to the therapeutic effects of amphetamines and indirectly to MAOI's efficacy! Basically going off depakote has the stimulant effect of reducing DAT activity and density!
Perhaps that's why it feels so good to get OFF it. So i am really confused if stopping it was purely the d/c effect of the drug, whether it was my bipolarity flaring up, or desoxyn IDK!
Anyone have any input or experience w/ this?
>>morgan
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> I might go back to depakote at some point and just take a 250mg ER dose at night. One interesting little tidbit on valproic acid is it enhances the production of neuronal progenitor stem cells. Maybe in the short time you were on it you did your brain some good!Hah that would be nice! Maybe, as im feeling OK now, not really moody.. could be the switch to marplan and feeling more alive off depakote. But it's my last week home until college so whatever good it did probably has not stood a chance against all the partying i've been doing lately... drinking/pills/mary jane. So maybe just im feeling good because Im high..
Rough time for me with going up to college this friday. Will be hard for me.. but i'm also pumped for school! This month ill be seeing the doc 3 times.. really scrambling to get the meds in check before i go!
desoxyn starting to work much better since off depakote so maybe i'll keep up w/ the posting and I won't have to write so much in 1 post!thanks for the help.
poster:tom2228
thread:959010
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20100821/msgs/959332.html