Lamictal Week 3: GI Stuff, Sleep, Alcohol, Skin, and Cognition

Week 3, my first week at 50 mgs of lamictal, continued to improve my mood, but also brought increased side effects.

Gastro-intestinal stuff:  For much of the week I've been slightly bloated, gassy, and constipated.  This has been mildly annoying but livable.

Skin stuff:  Still no sign of The Rash.  My initial pin-prick rash has not reappeared, but I took last week off from working out, so I might not have seen it anyway.  I continue to experience simultaneous dry skin and acne, but this could be worsening because my period is due.

My skin is definitely more sensitive than it used to be.  If I open the oven door to remove something, I really feel the heat -- and as it subsides, it itches quite a bit.  Then it's gone.  I've also noticed that it hurts more than it used to when my cat decides to wash my face.  That sandpaper tongue is murder!  My skin is also somewhat red afterward.

Alcohol: Yesterday I drank most of a bottle of wine in the evening.

As I was falling asleep, I realized that I've gone through 3 bottles of wine this week -- some of that was cooking, granted, but that accounts for maybe 80% of one of those bottles.

I probably went through three bottles of wine in the entire previous month before last week.

As I wrote at the end of last week, one side effect of the lamictal seems to be that alcohol doesn't give me as much in the way of tipsy-euphoric feelings as it used to, but I still get the slowed-down feelings.  I thought last week that this would continue to influence me not to drink. And yet, here I am, drinking.  Why?  Well, that brings us to ...

Sleep:  The insomnia I wrote about last week has continued.  I still sleep better, once I fall asleep, but I feel more and more as if this med is trying to give me a delayed sleep phase.

Only yesterday I was writing about my brain's tendency to race at night, and the need to find a way to wind down at night.  It would seem that 3 bottles of wine was attempt to do exactly this.  The scary thing is that I was not exactly aware that I was doing this while I was doing it.

The improved nightly routine I wrote about yesterday is looking more and more imperative.  I'm not sure what to do yet, but I need to do something.

Cognition:  In spite of consuming rather a lot of alcohol last night, I woke up this morning and was immediately able to hold a coherent conversation with my husband.

I am not a morning person.

Morning people are weirdos.  Everyone else will know that the brain is not meant to be functioning immediately after waking.  It requires at least fifteen minutes to communicate in monosyllables, and then a good breakfast, in order to be merely sluggish.  People who wake up ready to discuss the debt crisis are just ... abnormal.