I have taken Depakote before, I know it helped me but I got off it and switched to Trileptal several years ago due to the weight gain. I take 1200 mg of Trileptal and I've definitely experienced drowsiness from it. When my dose was upped to 1200 from 900 I probably slept anywhere from 12 to 16 hours a night, which is strange because I've been on many supposedly sedating medications and they never really made me very tired.

Anyway, the extreme drowsiness and excessive sleeping eventually went away