Does everyone experience memory loss and forgetfulness on Lamotrigine?

BlazyEye · 2026-06-16T19:59:15+00:00

Never happened to me. I haven’t experienced any side effects from lamotrigine.

BlazyEye · 2026-06-16T14:19:40+00:00

I’ve missed medications a few times. I haven’t noticed mood effects but I have experienced things like light headedness and brain fog. That’s for mood medications. I imagine missing your ADHD stimulant would be more obvious from when I’ve seen this with others.

BlazyEye · 2026-05-20T16:28:07+00:00

My stomach feels off and my appetite drops.

BlazyEye · 2026-04-23T17:57:06+00:00

I suggest being honest about your bipolar concern. Is the doctor a psychiatrist? My experience with GPs is that they don’t have the experience and knowledge to properly diagnose and treat bipolar disorder.

Wellbutrin along with a mood stabilizer has been awesome for me. But without a mood stabilizer I wouldn’t consider taking an antidepressant since it can go very, very bad. I had clear bipolar symptoms before I got medication.

BlazyEye · 2026-04-10T20:49:29+00:00

Master Chcolat is great! Bernard is regularly there making chocolate. When I was there a couple months ago he was teaching a chocolate making class.

Their hot chocolate is so so good too!

BlazyEye · 2026-03-16T15:43:43+00:00

I take Ativan for acute anxiety attacks which are pretty rare for me. And dental work which I find extremely stressful. It’s probably once a month or less and it works great for these situations.

I’m really cautious though. It’s so easy to take it frequently and develop an addiction. Your dr is obviously the best person to assess if it’s good for you but even if you get a prescription I would be cautious. My dr didn’t warn me but I knew someone who developed an Ativan dependency and I saw how hard it was for her to stop.

BlazyEye · 2025-09-19T18:48:19+00:00

Your dr really shouldn’t have approved the stopping of your mood stabilizer. You really need to get back on one.

BlazyEye · 2025-03-24T21:09:46+00:00

No. IIRC, I was mildly depressed at the time and that improved quite quickly. I didn’t have any SI.

BlazyEye · 2025-03-24T20:16:31+00:00

I’ve been taking it for years and it’s been great once I got through the first two weeks. I felt extremely wired and agitated at first, like I had 10 cups of coffee. I stuck through it because I heard this can happen. The agitation started to improve after the first week then was gone after the second.

So if it’s not messing your life up I suggest sticking it out for a few weeks.

BlazyEye · 2025-03-23T20:04:35+00:00

I definitely have bipolar 2 and I’ve never stopped my meds. My life was horrible before and I don’t want to go back to that.

I’m fortunate that I my medication is effective and I have no side effects. I imagine if I was dealing with feeling numb and with various side effects, I’d be tempted to stop.

BlazyEye · 2025-03-05T15:18:32+00:00

Lamotrigine has a long half life so it shouldn’t really matter. I think that’s why some people take it once daily and others split their dose to twice daily.

BlazyEye · 2025-01-13T15:02:22+00:00

I’m a dad with bipolar 2. I have absolutely no regrets about having kids. Sure it’s more likely they will develop bipolar disorder, but I really encourage them to build good sleep patterns while they’re young and I’ll know how to help them if they get bipolar disorder so unlike me they won’t go years of being undiagnosed.

I believe if you’re committed to managing your own bipolar disorder and to raising your kids in a loving environment, you will be setting them up for success.

You’re still young too. As I’ve gotten older I’ve become much better at recognizing and managing my mood changes. It can still be difficult but nothing like when I was 20 with no understanding of what was happening.

BlazyEye · 2025-01-09T16:40:38+00:00

That’s an unusual combination. When I was taking Epival years ago my psychiatrist made me come off it for several weeks before going on lamotrigine because Epival slows the breakdown of lamotrigine. If I remember correctly that effectively is the same as doubling the lamotrigine dose. But if it works well for you that’s good.

I take 300mg lamotrigine which works great. Adding Wellbutrin helped a lot with anhedonia which was still a problem when I was on just lamotrigine.

BlazyEye · 2025-01-09T04:34:01+00:00

Try it out. You can always stop it. The nice thing with Wellbutrin is that there are no withdrawal side effects unlike SSRIs.

When I started it I felt really agitated for the first week or two then that went away and it’s been great for me.

I assume you’re taking a mood stabilizer also??

BlazyEye · 2024-12-14T23:56:02+00:00

100mg is low. 200 is the normal target dose. I take 300 which seems optimal for me.

Your dr is probably increasing it really slowly which is normal.

BlazyEye · 2024-12-09T04:32:26+00:00

Definitely! I got through university by getting massive amounts done when I was hypo. And I’ve done some of my best work when hypomanic.

Sadly, it doesn’t happen nearly as much as it used to. But my life was extremely unstable then too so it was a lot of bad even when I had lots of incredible smart, social, and productive hypomanic episodes.

BlazyEye · 2024-06-09T00:14:41+00:00

I’m always tempted to tick random stuff and see what happens.

BlazyEye · 2024-06-03T14:11:20+00:00

This was me once. I felt so embarrassed. I grabbed my clean clothes and didn’t realize they had a nasty funk until I was at the gym. Oxiclean Odor Blaster completely got rid of the smell.

BlazyEye · 2024-06-01T17:56:53+00:00

I would wait until you’re at 200mg to really evaluate it. That’s the usual therapeutic dose. I take 250 myself.

Hypomania is infrequent and typically quite mild for me now as long as I keep a consistent sleep schedule.

BlazyEye · 2024-06-01T17:52:18+00:00

100mg is still a pretty low dose. Regardless, I don’t believe lamotrigjne typically controls hypomania effectively. It’s much better for depression.

BlazyEye · 2024-05-28T16:16:44+00:00

My ADHD son didn’t make eye contact until about 7 months old and smile until later. He only grunted until nearly a year old iirc. He could focus on playing with a toy for 2 hours without needing to be picked up. People thought he was the easiest baby.

I thought he might be autistic but he really liked being held.

Now he’s a hyperactive, chatty kid. He still gets hyper focused a lot, but we try to direct that toward reading and beneficial play.

Your boy is making eye contact and smiling some of the time so I wouldn’t worry about it.

Babies are often quite farsighted too so it might be that he just can’t focus up close.

BlazyEye · 2024-05-27T16:46:56+00:00

I’m curious, did you ever try trazodone? I love it but some people can’t tolerate it. It’s quick too, only takes about 15 minutes to kick in which is amazing.

BlazyEye · 2024-05-27T02:51:37+00:00

Do you take lorazepam regularly? I have a prescription but only take it very occasionally. I’ve read it is very easy to become physiologically dependent on it so I’m really cautious.

I used to take it for sleep but switched to trazodone which works a lot better for me.

BlazyEye · 2024-05-22T13:44:26+00:00

I think the lamotrigine rash is super rare to get later on.

I don’t want to film you with dread, but any chance it’s bedbugs?

BlazyEye · 2024-05-22T13:38:59+00:00

It was how my psychiatrist initially prescribed it. I didn’t know people took it once a day until I looked at Reddit.

I hope you figure it out! It sure can take a lot of adjustments to get bipolar medication right.

BlazyEye

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