I was on Trileptal for one year. Trileptal is said to be safer than Tegretol in regards to the side effects-- I believe that with Tegretol there are some issues with different blood disorders-- rare, but serious. Trileptal is not equal to Tegretol in effectiveness of treatment. In fact, Trileptal is rarely used as a sole 1st line agent for the treatment of bipolar. It is normally used in conjunction with another mood stabilizer. My pdoc put me on Trileptal only because I basically refused all other options. To be honest, Trileptal did nothing for my moods. I believe that it did help my anxiety some. While on this drug I experienced two major depressive episodes. As far as the side effects, I tolerated it pretty well. I started off very small-- 75 mg per day-- and eventually went up to 1200 per day. At the beginning I had headaches and diarrhea. Unfortunately, I also experienced this weird, transient side effect once I got up to the higher dose-- About 20 min. after taking the medication I would get this dizzy, out-of-it, completely drunk sort of feeling. It would last for about 30 minutes, then pass.

After about a year of taking this drug I decided to stop because I couldn't see any improvements on my mood.

I am currently on my 6th day of Lithium, but as of right now my dose is too low to determine anything.