I have a friend that is prescribed 750mg of depakote as a mood stabilizer. She has been on it a while and thinks she was misunderstood when she presented her problems to the psychiatrist, and had nothing but depressing, dark days on it. I told her not to, but she is going off the depakote cold turkey. Can she get withdrawal symptoms? And what would happen? She has been on it for not even 3 months. She is a friend from the past that got in touch with me because she knows I understand these things.
It’s a great med, I’m pretty sure but a friend told me going off mood stabs abruptly is not a good idea bcoz of them being seizure meds or something. with withrawals etc she said
Yeah I researched that online that someone can take a seizure but I thought that was if you were being treated for epilepsy and not a mood disorder
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It’s a tough thing…
Most of our meds lower seizure thresholds. I had a gran mal stopping xanax abruptly. It’s a different drug for sure but you need expert advice and stopping suddenly ins’t good. You need to titrate slowly down.
It’s still something that requires supervision.
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I once accidentally quit depakote cold turkey after being on it for a longer time period than that (though my dose was slightly smaller). I was changing too many meds at once and accidentally stopped taking it in the confusion. I didn’t get any withdrawal but I did get nasty rebound symptoms, symptoms I hadn’t experienced in a really long time so I knew right away something was up. I immediately started taking it again and I ended up fine. She’ll have to learn her lesson the hard way like most of us do.
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