Meds & Supplements, Mental Health, Treatment

Adjusting Depression Meds

Today was my appointment with the psychiatrist to adjust my meds. The plan is to increase the Wellbutrin from 300 to 400 mg a day, decrease the Cymbalta from 120 to 60 mg a day and add Lamictal to the mix.

Lamictal, an antiepileptic med that is also a mood stabilizer, is used in patients with epilepsy (surprise, surprise) and bipolar disorder. It is closely related to Depakote, a commonly prescribed headache preventive, and both may reduce pain levels. Unlike Depakote, Lamictal also has antidepressant properties.

It will be about 6 weeks before I know if the adjusted doses of Wellbutrin and Cymbalta combined with Lamictal will be the right cocktail for me. To use a phrase I despise, I’m cautiously optimistic that this will be the right cocktail in the long run. But I can’t shake the knowledge that I’ve yet to find the right headache mix. If one disease isn’t fixable, then maybe the other isn’t either.

I’ve been treating depression as a minor relative to the consuming disease of migraine, and I really want to keep it this way. I don’t think I can handle having two diseases that require constant attention and upkeep. But I won’t torture myself with such thoughts right now.

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