Just writing a quick post to document the effect that lamotrigine has on my sleep.
I started taking lamotrigine at 25mg and started increasing it very gradually until reaching a therapeutic dose, as it is recommended. Once I got to 75-100mg daily, I started struggling with sleep. It would take me at least a couple hours to fall asleep, then I’d sleep for maybe four hours at most before I was wide awake again.
Adding another medication at night helped with this. I have always taken the lamotrigine split in two doses: morning and afternoon. They split it like that when I started meds in the hospital, and I’ve kept it that way as it was working well. Since then, I had always taken it around 17.30 when I got home from work, and I’ve been sleeping fine.
My shift was slightly changed to finish a bit later, so now I was taking it about half an hour to an hour later than I used to. I’d fall asleep just fine, but I’d wake up within a couple of hours and continue waking up throughout the night. I’d also have bad dreams and nightmares where I would wake myself up shouting.
Thought it might be the lamotrigine, so I started taking it earlier before leaving work. I’m sleeping like I used to, waking up once or twice at most throughout the night and quickly falling back asleep, no nightmares, and waking up feeling rested in the morning.
I was starting to get worried my night meds dose wasn’t effective anymore, but luckily it was just the timing of things.
Can’t say I expected such a small change to have any impact.
not just bipolar 