Posted by wishingstar on December 12, 2006, at 19:48:08
Recently I've started feeling more depressed than I have in several weeks, since I started lithium and got some relief from that. Suicidal feelings have also come back big time - from passive ideation back to the serious consideration I was at a month or so ago.
Currently I'm taking 300mg lithium - I was on 600 but started having panic attacks on this dose. Aside from some agitation, it seems to help a little.. but my diagnosis is unipolar depression, so it only helps to a degree.
I also recently started lamictal. I've been taking 25mg and will move up to 50 tomorrow, and up from there.
I also made one other change which may be the culprit. I had taken hormonal birth control for about 8 months and stopped it right around the time I started the lamictal... about 10 days ago. But everything I've heard about hbc is that is can cause depression, not the opposite, so it seems illogical that stopping that would drastically alter my mood in this way.
Do you all have any thoughts on this? Could it be the lamictal? Stopping the birth control?
I have one other fear. I am very resistant to medications and have been through tons with no success. But that was mostly while I was on the bc. Is it possible that stopping bc means we're no longer trying to medicate the same issue? I mean, stopping it obviously changes my body chemistry. Is it possible that some drugs that have not worked/worked over the past year now would have a different effect? I cant imagine having to re-try different anti-depressants, or having the lithium stop working on me now that my body chemistry has changed.
Thanks for your help.
poster:wishingstar
thread:713000
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20061212/msgs/713000.html