Good Results--Even Hormones This med has even been used to help control catamenial seizures that occur once a month. as well as complex partials that are well cotrolled with it and the other med I take. It works well most of the time if I do my part and remember to increase the dose...that's hard for me to do. That's the only time I've had side effects with it...slight dizziness and off balance but I can tolerate for 2-3 days to control seizures. Don't feel I've been on it a real long time and I have a special policy so I don't have to pay full price for my meds....that's why I rated N/A.

Stay With It , The Weight Does Come Off Slowly Topamax works fine for mood swings without weight gain. I gave it a few months and I'm finally loosing weight. My beer doesn't taste flat anymore. I'm still drinking less than I used to. I am happy with my progress.

Too Short A Time Frame To actually know it's results and affects. Cost too much to continue with treatment, headaches seem to worsen on the low dosage

Topamax One good thing about Topamax, and why I think my prev. pdoc (prev. due to a move) tried me on it, is that it doesn't tend to be bad in terms of side effects, compared to some of the other mood stabilizers. If your dosage gets too high, though, you'll be able to tell because you'll develop what's called 'word loss.' I have a lot of memory probs., but word loss as a side effect is pretty pronounced. For me, a 25mg daily decrease was enough to get rid of that side effect. Topamax was moderately effective for me as a mood stabilizer; however I hit a severe depression & so my pdoc added Lamictal (said to be particularly useful for bipolar w/ depression, & I'm diagnosed as Type II, which is the more depressive form of bipolar). I have a new pdoc, since I'm living in a different city now. She feels that the Topamax isn't working that well for me, and we're taking me off of it & will try Depakote. She did say that in my particular case Topamax wasn't known to be very useful; I forget why. I think she said it was because of the depressive issues. She thought of trying me on lithium, but since I've had a longtime tremor she said that med wouldn't be a good choice for me. My last actual dosage was 100 mg a.m. (well, when I got up, night owl, smile), and 75 mg at bedtime. A factor that had to be considered: I'm going through a messy divorce & have been in distressing circumstances for nearly a year as I had to leave a verbally abusive marriage. So at times it's been difficult to know how much my problems have been due to that, as opposed to whether my meds needed to be tweaked. Any med will be horrible for some people & a godsend for others, so it's something to take into account. Finding the right meds, & tweaking them till you have a good dosage/combination, is definitely more art than science. Sometimes, it's more of a crapshoot!

Taking Topamax I don't remember this medication too well--I took it when I was first diagnosed Bi-polar. I know that it helped even me out but I had a huge manic episode after I was on it about four months and they changed my medication during that time.

No more mood swings for me I started taking 25 mg. of topamax twice a day in 9/04. I'm bipolar 2, and never realized how whack I actually was until this drug kicked in. I was calm, my thoughts weren't racing, I wasn't constantly agitated and angry, screaming and eating too much and puking it up. I was bulimic, too. Topamax cured my eating disorder, which was probably caused by the bipolar illness.

But by 11/04, I began having extreme panic attacks, maybe a side effect? So the dr. gave me xanax, which I became addicted to, which caused depression, so I went through wellbutrin and cymbalta before we settled on zoloft for that.

I've stopped taking the topamax because I miss my "highs" but after about a week of being a raging hysterical maniac, I'm ready to start taking it again. The only bad side effect I've had is that I've lost twenty-five pounds that I really didn't need to lose and now I look like death. My dr. recently increased my dose to fifty mg. twice a day because along with the season change from cold to hot comes hypomania, and I was having hypomanic symptoms. Being on 100 mg. a day has really helped a lot.

Thanks to topamax, my husband has a decent wife and my three year old son finally has a mother he can depend on to be there for him.

The side effects almost outway the effectivness! I am currently on 250mg of topamax twice daily for epilepsey and have found that my concentration, memory and my ability to retain information have dramatically worsened. But my seizures have also decreased from 2-3 per month to only one grande mal episode since November. Prior to this, I was on a very high dose of valproic acid... I also find myself word-searching constantly. This is not a good thing considering I'm a nurse..... Time for a new solution!

So Far Pretty Good I've been taking Topamax for a couple of months now, but just in the past 3 weeks started ramping it up, and just this morning finally ramped it up to 100mg...2 25 mg tablets in the AM and 2 25 mg tablets at bedtime. For the past week and a half or so, I've noticed major tingling and numbness in my feet almost to the point where it's painful, but not quite...mostly just annoying.

In the last few days my lips have been tingling, and just yesterday my hands started the numbness and tingling. Like I said, way more annoying than painful. I do understand why some of you call it "Dopamax." It makes me zone out a lot. I usually read magazines or a book before I go to bed and I've noticed I can't really concentrate on doing that now. My memory is also totally crazy like I can't remember from one second to the next, but I can in a way...it's kind of weird.

Also, up until this morning I had just been taking 25 mg in the morning and 50 mg at night, so I wasn't noticing a major difference in appetite, but WOW! This morning, I took the 50 mg, and took about 2 bites of cereal and didn't want to have any more to do with it. Taste is a little different. I think I'll be noticing a lot more of the side effects of taste and memory and stuff now that I'm taking more in the daytime and not right before I go to bed.

I've noticed that I'm a little more easily irritable and anger a little easier, but not to the point where it's horrible or makes me want to stop taking it. However, I have a unique situation. I know most people are taking this drug for migraines or bipolar. I have a disease called avascular necrosis. It's where my bones die. It causes a lot of pain and the docs are trying to find an alternative to putting me on narcotics all the time. SO, we will see if this works.

I read most everyone's posts about this, and I see that most people are taking max 100mg or 200 mg a day. My docs want me to ramp up to 400 mg a day!!!!! Does that sound crazy to

I Want My Miracle Back! Even though I received my prescriptions at no cost, I had to give this drug a 10 because I know how expensive it is, and it is worth 300 bucks a month. This is, hands down, THE MOST EFFECTIVE DRUG IN EXISTENCE FOR BULIMIA. I believe Prozac is still the only one approved by the USFDA. It didn't work for when I was 13-- for much of anything-- and continued to not work for the next 2 years. Topamax as part of my psychotropic cocktail, for a few months in 2004, I was in about as much of a real remission from my both my major depression AND bulimia (though not dysthymia, but big whoop).

I've learned that topamax targets the temporal lobe(s?) in the brain. From this info (and a bazillion articles I found in PubMed) I've managed to infer that a huge chunk of my psychiatric resume is choreographed by my temporal lobe.

It was originally prescribed under the guise of an off-label "mood stabilizer." It has since been conclusively found to have no mood-stabilizing qualities whatsoever. I agreed to add it to my EffexorXR based solely on the fact that its side effect profile displayed a huge tendency to cause weight loss. Having an eating disorder, sad as it is, dictates my pharmacological options.

I did not really "suffer" for very long (if at all) from the major side effects people seem to hate. Carbonated drinks never tasted wierd, and being as Topa was something like psych med #23, I was already completely prepared for the brain cooties that are par for the course at the start of almost every one of these drugs.

It never really made me stupid, as I recall. I did have a greater than usual problem with aphasia (word finding) for a couple of months as I made my way up to my therapeutic dosage target as a smoker (the coffin sticks reduce the metabolism of Topa by something like 30%) but once I hit the spot and got settled on it I got my vocabulary back (well, most of it. aphasia has been an ongoing problem for me since I started ba

Topamax I recommend Topamax very highly. I have started on a weight loss program under the supervision of a doctor. He not only has a degree in Weight Management but he is also a psychiatrist. At my first visit he suggested that I substitute the Lithium that I had been taking for Topamax. After I suggested this to my psychiatrist at that time, we came to a mutual agreement that I would change psychiatrists to my weight loss doctor. I have never regreted the change---both to the new psychiatrist and from Lithium to Topamax. The doctor said 40 to 50 pounds of my excess weight could be attributed to Lithium. Unlike Lithium, which has a side effect to GAIN weight, Topamax has a side effect to LOSE weight. It is sure working for me, of course I am very disciplined in following a structure weight management plan also. In terms of my manic depression, I've always felt that Lithium restricted my mood to a middle level, never letting me get anywhere near to hypomania and keeping me out of depression (Although once in depression, gfoing on to Lithium could NOT take me out of the depression.) Topamax though, allows my true personality to come out and I have plenty of energy and a positve frame of mind.