Hi, I'm Lesa

I was diagnosed with bipolar 2 disorder in 1995. I was prescribed so many medications at the beginning of my journey I can’t recall them all. What I can say is that my Dr called me “drug sensitive” as the side effects I suffered from all of them significantly reduced my quality of life. In the very early 2000s my Dr put me in citalopram which greatly helped with depression without pushing me into a mixed state. It was around the same time that Lamictal was added on. For the first time I had a regimen that was effective without side effects or weight gain. I have been taking these medications for so long that I have been wanting to try a drug holiday for years. It was a VERY rough road weening off citalopram because of brain zapps. It took over a year to reduce my dose from 40, 20, 10 then breaking a 10 in half and then to just nibble off a little of the half. The whole time I didn’t bother with zapps until I got to 5mg. That was the hardest. When I finally quit completely the zapps were bothersome (in Feb 2026) and I almost went back but I persevered and stuck with it. I still have zapps occasionally but I have noticed it seems to increase if I miss doses of Lamotrigine. I recently discovered that Lamotrigine is an SSRI and getting off it will likely have the same problem with zapping. I came here to explore how others tapered and what problems to expect and mostly how to deal with it. I have learned that psych docs aren’t the best resource for tapering problems because until they’ve experienced what an electrical jolt in your head/body feels like they will never truly understand what havoc they can be in coping with.