Lamictal: Lemon Flavoured Hell

Girl hates Lamictal

Two posts ago I shared about my slowly increasing Lamictal dose. I reached 200mg and started to feel a little better emotionally but dreading taking it every morning as the tablets are dissolvable and the second they touch your tongue you’re attacked by what I can best describe as out-of-date lemon sherbet (I don’t think sherbet goes off though). Two weeks ago the jump was made from 200-300mg and the same day I started feeling very nauseous, the next day I spent six hours in Emergency due to a Stephens Johnson scare. I had a few symptoms which I wasn’t worried by but because I was very uncomfortable I called Nurse on Call and she called a paramedic who called Poisons Hotline who then called back the paramedic and insisted I go into Emergency. It resulted in nothing but some painkillers and one tablet which had a very long name I can’t recall.

So that was last Sunday. I continued taking the 300mg dose and being able to eat next to nothing until last Wednesday when the taste got the better of me and I threw it up the moment I swallowed it. I had an appointment with my psychiatrist that day, he encouraged me to keep going with it and see if the nausea went away. Next day I threw up the tablet again and decided to give up on it. Even if my mood was better I couldn’t continue feeling constantly sick and I could no longer swallow the bloody things anyway. It took until this Monday for the nausea to go away and now I can eat a full meal. Dropped a bit of weight though.

I’m still off Seroquel and I can feel feelings, I think I like it but it’s scary. At the moment I’m not on an antidepressant and I feel okay, it’s the anxiety causing most of the problems. I am however on an antipsychotic and a mood stabiliser. I’m interested to see the direction things take in coming months. An interesting start point is that if a gun was immediately placed on the table I’m sitting at I don’t think I’d shoot myself, but only six to eight weeks ago I wouldn’t have hesitated. Progress my friends.

K Minus Seroquel

It has been a week since I took 30 200mg tablets of Seroquel – 6g for those of you with my maths skills. I hoped for at least 24 hours unconscious, but I got less than 12. As usual I made sure they were spent in hospital, I’m not stupid enough to let my housemates find me like that. I lost a lot of housemates in my 20s through frequent overdoses, although I think even then I got myself to hospital. Anyway, I digress. Since returning home I haven’t taken any Seroquel, my daily dose was 200mg plus another 200mg if I needed it. I dared not take it on Friday night as the huge dose from the previous night was still very much in my system, same Saturday night. By Sunday I was functioning normally again, no slurred speech, no tremor, I could see and hold a cup of tea without spilling it all over the table. I thought maybe if it’s slowly come out of me I could continue just letting it leave my system and not return to my usual dose. Monday was the first real test, I thought by then the overdose would have worked its way out of me and I’d be running on empty. Well, I got to sleep and I haven’t done anything wild. I am on many other drugs, but Seroquel really controls you.

Since Friday I’ve lost 4kg, I’m hardly ever hungry and I can’t quite explain the feeling, just different. I think being off Seroquel is going to be very good for me. It drastically slows the metabolism and makes you ravenous all the time, hence the 50kg I’ve gained since starting it. Together with my gym visits three times a week I may get back to a size I’m not repulsed by.

I have a lot more to share with you but I’m going to leave it for another post.

Good Evening.

K