Day 41, 100 mgs of Lamictal: Feeling Better About Life

I think I may be hitting a sweet spot where the lamictal dosage is concerned.  It's been tough to track my moods in some ways because I've had a fair bit of stress since I started the titration.  The situation with my grandmother is stressful, and my mood definitely took a hit from that.  Then there's the whole deal with my marriage.

I'm feeling more optimistic about that today.  The last few days have been pretty hard.  At many points I found myself obsessing over the difficult times my husband and I have had.  I wondered if we've ever been truly happy together.  I wondered why my husband even wants to be with me, when my learning disabilities, my ADHD, and my mood disorder clearly cause him so many problems.  It's been nearly ten years since I've done this sort of thing.

I guess the mindfulness training must be paying off, because at some point I realized that I was basically thinking "depressive thoughts" about my husband and me.  My depression was causing me to undervalue the good times we've had and the good things about our relationship.  Basically, instead of thinking depressive thoughts about myself -- I'm no good, I'll never be successful, etc. -- I was thinking those thoughts about my marriage.

Lamictal Day 39: 125 mgs? Oops.

I'm supposed to be taking 75 mgs of lamictal.  Today I accidentally took 125.  For a drug which can have serious consequences if too much is taken too soon, this could have been a serious mistake.  So far though, the only side effect seems to be some mild tachycardia, which went away after I meditated.

How did I manage to screw this up?  Well, in order to replace the disastrous NorthStar lamotrigine, a prescription which my psychiatrist had written for 25 mg pills, I needed a different denomination of pills in order for my scrip to be covered by insurance.  Lamictal and lamotrigine apparently don't come in a 50 mg denomination (no, that would be easy).  My pdoc had to write the scrip for 100 mgs, and then I was supposed to break them in half, and cut the remaining piece in half, and thus achieve 75 mgs.  Kind of confusing.  To help explain, here's a picture of Teva lamotrigine:

As you can see, they're scored down the middle, so it's pretty easy to break them in half and get 50 mgs. To break one of those halves in half takes a sharp knife, but it's doable.  I know this because I did it yesterday.  Then I put the half of a half tablet back into the medicine bottle.