Why am I depressed? —

When I finally stabilized and came back down to reality I got hit with a pretty severe depression and hadn’t felt like this ever before. I was literally just existing, no energy, feeling exhausted, sleeping a lot, barely eating, low mood and motivation to do nothing. I was working at the time so that was forcing me to get out of bed because I wanted to be a responsible employee. I wasn’t happy with my life but I was glad I had survived such a scary part of the illness and came close to dying. I wasn’t delusional anymore.

I pushed through with all this for a good month until I told my psychiatrist how I was feeling. She put on Wellbutrin started me off with a low dose and then eventually had to increase. My motivation, energy, mood everything started to lift. I was taking 200mg at the highest dose and was feeling great but it was keeping my brain a little too active and was having racing thoughts all the time but I was stable and dealing with it. I eventually slowly started to taper down and was steady and stable on 50mg per day and told my psychiatrist as well.

I had been doing pretty good on that dose and was hoping that I wouldn’t need it anymore but didn’t stop taking the medication. Recently I’ve been slipping into my depression again. Don’t feel like getting out of bed and it seems that the exhaustion I was feeling is starting to return with the low mood and I’ve been sleeping too much as well. I’ve been taking Wellbutrin for more than a year now and was hoping that the depression would have lifted by now but it seems like its still lingering in the background. Why am I depressed? I try to be grateful for everything and am happy with a lot of things but this depression doesn’t seem like it going away. Any advice would be helpful.

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Could be the Wellbutrin. Even though it is an AD, it’s very stimulating as it increases dopamine in the brain.

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With the changes of having this illness and losing some of your hopes and dreams might explain some depression. Or it is possible that you have a biochemical reason because of a brain disorder. Whatever the reason I think an anti-depressant can help.

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If you keep needing to go up and down it sounds like a mood stabilizer might be better or a different AD. I can’t take Wellbutrin, it makes me feel crazy.

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I agree with @LilyoftheValley in that Wellbutrin made me a little nuts. It also helped with my energy but not really my mood so much as kinda masking the real issue. You may want to ask your pdoc about switching to a more activating SSRI like zoloft or at least supplementing the Wellbutrin with some SSRI

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The main problem I have is that when I sleep too much I wake up feeling depressed. Today I woke up a little earlier and didn’t feel depressed and my mood was fine. I have to force myself to wake up early. I didn’t sleep good last night anyway and kept waking up over and over again. So I have to force myself to get up after sleeping for atleast 9 hours the max. I’ll talk to my psychiatrist about trying something else. Wellbutrin doesn’t make me crazy or anything it’s just keeps my mind racing a lot that’s the only reason I went with a lowered dose.