so far i already have a headache only like 2 hours after taking my first dose which is pretty noticeable for me because i like never get headaches, hoping that’s the only side effect i get
It will take about 6 weeks for the effects to fully manifest. Stay hydrated, don’t get overheated. Both of them will make you more sensitive to heat.
dang, i live in a desert and exclusively wear bulky clothing so i’ll really have to make sure to stay cool, thank you for the heads up
For a spell, i took both of them. Lexapro has been a constant for me for years and im a fan. Wellbutrin is a mild stimulant, and eventually caused a manic episode linked to my BP2 after about a month, so please keep an eye out on your mental state as best you can!
Note that my Wellbutrin was prescribed for ADHD rather than depression.
Bupropion gave me (more) anxiety.
Everybody has pretty much said what I was going to say about the meds. Here’s a bunch of stuff to avoid.
Avoid caffeine like the fucking plague for at least your first few days. Caffeine made me sick af on Wellbutrin at the start. It will make every side effect of Wellbutrin worse.
Avoid alcohol at the start. Wellbutrin makes the hangover absolutely unbearable off anything more than 1 beer. Lexapro has this same effect so I’ve heard.
Also DM cough syrup. You can’t take that as long as you’re on Lexapro. Wellbutrin just makes it way stronger so that’s safe enough but probably not something you want. Cough medicine often contains an SSRI called DXM in it. Mixing two SSRIs is how you end up with what is known as serotonin poisoning. It is deeply unpleasant and potentially fatal if left untreated.
All that being said, I also had a headache the first day I took Wellbutrin, but it went away the next day. However, I discontinued Wellbutrin because of the side effects. I am autistic though, and get easily overwhelmed by stimulants. If you have ADHD, it may work better for you. I switched over to an SSRI (the group Lexapro is in) and that has done more than pretty much anything.
avoiding caffeine is easy enough, it already gives me headaches
also i’m not taking cough syrup so i’m good there
alcohol will be the tough part. i drink a lot so quitting that will suck hard, idk if i can cold turkey but i’ll give it a go
i’m taking my meds for depression and anxiety. i highly suspect that i’m autistic but haven’t been diagnosed, idk about adhd though
I mean if you drink a lot a lot, I probably wouldn’t cold turkey it. On wellbutrin, I always noticed that one beer was fine, but if I went past that it got really nasty. I’ve heard that the hangover thing gets better over time, but I’m trying not to drink anymore so I won’t have anything on that. I’d say give it a shot, but have some ibuprofen on hand in case it goes wrong.
Yeah, if you feel overstimulated and anxious, it’s probably the wellbutrin. Although not all SSRIs work for everybody. I don’t really know why they’re starting you on both at the same time.
I don’t really know why they’re starting you on both at the same time.
Thanks for pointing this out especially.
It does seem like an odd choice and I don’t want to preempt things and spoøk anyone but starting both at the same time sounds like a recipe for an unnecessary amount of side effects that might even overlap or amplify eachother so the likelihood of needing to discontinue them both is much higher than if they were staggered out.
It’s also going to be much harder to figure out what’s working, what isn’t, which dose needs to be adjusted, and where certain side effects are coming from.
If someone asked me whether I’d recommend this, I’d give it a hard nope except in unusual circumstances like opting for California rocket fuel or you’re dealing with psychosis and the likelihood of a mood disorder where the need to stabilise supercedes concerns about figuring out what’s working and what isn’t.
Autistic people often report that SSRIs don’t work well for them and that they get more severe side effects.
This is not always the case so don’t set the expectation that it’s not going to work for you. Also keep in mind that there’s a sampling bias here - you don’t see autistic people constantly telling everyone “I took SSRIs and it was pretty okay, nothing much to report on really” but the autistic people who have had bad experiences with SSRIs are going to be more vocal about it because that’s just how things work.
As general advice for a person who is autistic or who suspects that they are I’d say that a low dose might well be the sweet spot for you where you get the benefits without so much of the side effects and, if you do increase your dose to do so gradually because if you happen to be unusually sensitive to the side effects like a lot of autistic people report then the typical way that you are directed to increase your dose might be too rapid for you.
Anxiety and depression are really common for autistic people but autism often brings experiences of executive dysfunction, burnout, and catatonia which can resemble depression very closely. My hunch is that there’s a good percentage of autistic people who experience these things but they are under the impression that they are symptoms of depression and so they find antidepressants don’t work for them.
In a similar way, symptoms of anxiety can closely resemble experiences like overstimulation and being exposed to noxious stimuli, masking, suppressing stims, and not meeting your need for stability and predicability in your environment.
If you think that you’re likely autistic I’d encourage you to look into these things at your own pace and to approach symptoms with curiousity and a sort of scientific approach, without any preconceptions, to see if there’s a possibility that your experience might be, say, burnout rather than depression. Or that some symptoms that you experience might be better understood as burnout instead of depression. This is me speaking from hard earned experience - I was far too quick to lump all of my symptoms into common categories like anxiety or depression without really putting in the time to consider whether or not this was accurate and so I wasted a lot of time and effort trying to find the “right” treatment for my depression when half of my symptoms weren’t even depression at all.
idk about ADHD though
ADHD occurs somewhere around the 40% mark in autistic people. (The reverse is not true however - there’s no data indicating that 40% of ADHDers are also autistic.)
There’s a real gap in understanding what auDHD is like and this goes all the way to research. I’m diagnosed auDHD and treated for it (so the chances of this being a misdiagnosis are extremely unlikely) and my experience of it is that the traits of both conditions sometimes mellow out the extremes but sometimes they can aggravate them or amplify them too, so it isn’t something like anxiety and depression where the anxiety tends to override the depression or vice versa, and it’s not a matter of an additional thing like having insomnia plus depression, where your mood is low and you have serious difficulties with sleep. Instead auDHD often feels like a weird blend of symptoms and traits that are often conflicting.
I’m gonna do some shameless self-promotion and link to a post I made about my own internal experience of auDHD here. This is just my own experience, it’s not diagnostic and it’s not intended to be but you might find it interesting. If a lot of it happens to resonate with you then that’s a good indication to consider if you might be auDHD yourself.
Obviously all of this is just stuff to consider, I’m not telling you how things are for you or trying to steer you in any particular direction; you know yourself better than some unqualified internet stranger ever could.
Anxiety and depression are really common for autistic people but autism often brings experiences of executive dysfunction, burnout, and catatonia which can resemble depression very closely. My hunch is that there’s a good percentage of autistic people who experience these things but they are under the impression that they are symptoms of depression and so they find antidepressants don’t work for them.
In a similar way, symptoms of anxiety can closely resemble experiences like overstimulation and being exposed to noxious stimuli, masking, suppressing stims, and not meeting your need for stability and predicability in your environment.
i would not be surprised if that is the situation i am in, i probably have both burnout/depression and anxiety/overstimulation though
especially when it comes to anxiety. i’ve always described and felt anxiety differently than how other people describe it, to me it’s kind of like an inability to do a task, complete freeze at the idea of doing something unfamiliar or without clear instructions. i do also experience what most of people would describe anxiety to be more like, the panicky fast heart rate inability to stay still kind of deal. but i always though of those as two different reactions to the same emotion. kind of like fight, flight or freeze situation. the first feeling just being the freeze response to anxiety while the second being the flight response to anxiety. i never thought of those as two separate things, so i just lumped them into together, but i guess it does make sense to differentiate
if this is the case and i don’t actually have depression and anxiety and it is just autism symptoms, will medication still work?
I used to take Lexapro, but it didn’t work great for me. Taking a pharmacogenetic test revealed that I am genetically predisposed to not be a good metabolizer of Lexapro (or any other SSRI), so I switched to Wellbutrin SR. That was 7 years ago, it works fine for me.
Side note: Becacause Wellbutrin makes you more wakeful, if you are taking a stimulant ADHD medication, this might be a good time to consider a non-stimulant ADHD medication, as taking a stimulant on top of Wellbutrin might be a little overkill (it was for me). In my case, I take Strattera, it seems to have a synergistic effect with Wellbutrin.
