Question:
My doc just added new meds to my mix of wellbutrin and celexa. BTW, I
highly recommend Celexa. It's almost as good as Prozac the first time I
was on it. Anyway, he added an antiepileptic called Neurontin. Has anybody ever
heard of using drugs this way, as "add-ons"? I'm not sure what the drug
is supposed to do -- calm me? Turn off the noise in my head?
Answer:
mine wants to add neurontin to celexa wellbutrin xanax and klonny ...
same deal with long term depression and hard to pin down elements. This will be 7 pills a day for me. How many for you? My mom told me to
buy a pill box last week -- I joked that I'm not an old lady (27), but
now maybe I should buy one!! I don't mind being on medication because it works; however, I am
concerned about long-term side effects. Neurontin is only 10 years old
and I didn't find any reports of studies.
Do you know why it's added? How it works and what it's supposed to do?Regarding antiepileptics as mood stabilizers in general, their use as
such comes from research done on lab rats. The animals were
deliberately put into a depressed state, then treated and brought back
to health again. When the experiment was done again, researchers found
the rats became depressed much more quickly. Testing showed that the limbic system of the animals' brains, the area
which controls feelings and emotions, was seizing during depression.
Over time, the convulsions more and more readily occured under stressful
conditions, a syndrome known as "kindling." The theory is that the same
type of activity may be happening in the limbic system of the brains of
persons suffering from depression, and that an anticonvulsant medication
would ameliorate that condition.
Certain antiepileptic drugs such as Neurotonin, Depakene/Depakote,
Tegretol and Lamictal have been used for some time as mood stabilizers
for patients with unipolar and bipolar depression, with significantly
good results
Neurontin is used in bipolar and depression as a mood stabilizer. It should
help even out the highs and lows. Unlike most of the other
anti-epileptics/mood stabilizers, Neurontin isn't eliminated through the liver.
So, it doesn't require all of the blood tests and liver function tests that
most of the others do. (It's actually eliminated from the body every 6 or 7
hours or so. I've been taking it for a year or so -- ever since I had to quit taking
Depakote (my first mood stabilizer). It has been a great help to me,
personally. I take it in combination with Zoloft and Tranxene. (Or is that
Tranzene? I can never remember.)
like sasha said, studies have found that antiepileptics like neurontin
are helpful in treating people with various types of depressive and
bipolar disorders. here's a rundown of what is often prescribed: lithium is probably the most effective treatment for people with
bipolar I (people who have extreme highs and lows and whose cycles
tend to last longer than those people with bipolar II disorder). some
of these people are switching to drugs like neurontin, however,
because lithium has pretty nasty side effects and has to be monitored
very closely because there's a fine line between an effective dose and
a toxic dose.
drugs like neurontin are probably most often prescribed to people with
bipolar II disorder, and they have been found very effective in
treating this.
drugs like neurontin are also being increasingly prescribed for people
who just have depression, though these people tend to have atypical
depression, depression with elements of bipolar disorder, or
depression that psychiatrists have been unable to treat with
antidepressants alone.
in all three of these categories, people are also often on
combinations of drugs. those with bipolar disorder for example are
often on a mood stabilizer to even out their cycling, but they might
be on an antidepressant as well if their lows are still too low.
my story sounds similar to yours. i have depression, but it's
atypical in a lot of ways and has elements of bipolar disorder. i had
a reaction that a bipolar would have to the first antidepressant i
tried (it made me really, really agitated). the second antidepressant
i went on also increased the agitation, but not quite as much and it
helped the depression too, so i stayed on it.
however, since i recognized that i was cycling (like bipolars do), i
requested that my pdoc add a mood stabilizer to my anti-depressant,
which she did. i am now on effexor and depakote, and adding the
depakote made a *world* of difference. it helped decrease my
agitation and anxiety, increase my ability to concentrate and focus,
it made my cycling less extreme and more manageable.
my advice would be to try the medication and see if it helps at all.
if it doesn't, you can always quit it, but if you have elements of
bipolar disorder, there's a good chance it might help.
