Carbamazepine (Tegretol)

[cHiNa_dOlli3]

Please any reviews on this medication? My doctor change my meds again!!

[cHiNa_dOlli3]

Thank you

[Anonymouse88]

It's a first line drug for bipolar, but it can have nasty side effects, which you won't know until you take it.  Some side effects go away after a few weeks or months.

The thing to be careful about is that it interacts with a lot of things, including birth control pills.  It speeds up some of your liver enzymes, which makes most drugs processed by that system less effective (there are some exceptions).  Read the patient leaflet very carefully, and use something like drug.com's interaction checker.

I like to recommend the crazymeds.us site, both the wiki and the forums.  The wiki is in plain English, and the forums have a huge number of people who are on or who have been on carbamazepine.

Remember that your doctor has the responsibility to make sure you understand your medications and to answer your questions in language you can understand (i.e. not technical jargon).  You can also ask any pharmacist for free about it, and they'll always ask you when picking up if you have any questions for the pharmacist, which means you don't need to make and pay for another appointment if the doctor doesn't take calls.

[fromlight2dark]

My doctor added this to my regimen not just to stabilize my mood, but to get my migraines under control.  I didn't have any bad effects from it at all, but I did have to add another med for migraines.  I have chronic migraine syndrome and am out of commission about 15 days a month.  If you have a lot of headaches it could be a double win.