Wellbutrin or Effexor?

I was told at my psych consult yesterday that they don't feel lithium alone will be enough, and I may get depressed. I tend to get depressed around January/February until May/June, and they said they'd like me to give Lithium 2-3 months to see how it helps with everything but if I don't feel 100% where I want to be by then to go on something along with it... So I am trying to start my research now for what I'd like to take. They suggested Seroquel but it makes me too tired and I have a young child who I need to be able to respond to at night. SSRI medications affect me negatively so I am looking for some alternatives.. Both of these ones stood out to me. Anyone have experience with Wellbutrin or Effexor? I am going to talk to my doctor about them when I see her next week but probably won't go on anything right away.

I have been a bit teary-eyed and weepy the last couple of days but I am thinking that might just be from getting relief from my hypomanic symptoms.

I take tegretol along with my lithium. I don't want to use antipsychotics like seroquel long term. So I chose to go with an anticonvulsant like tegretol instead. So that is always an option too.

I have tried Effexor three times and every time I was extremely manic and psychotic within a week. That's just my experience tho.

Effexor didn't treat me well at all.. Major manic and I did some really stupid, regretful things.. I haven't tried Wellbutrin...

Effexor mad me manic and psychotic. with wellbutrin i had a headache for the entire month that i was on it.

I've taken both. Effexor was more effective than SSRI's for me. Some people report horrible withdrawal from Effexor but I had no problems with that. Quite the opposite, I was pretty inconsistent about taking it at the time...

Wellbutrin was the wonder drug that kept me functional for a decade, without mood stabilizers. I still take it but in much lower doses than I used to before I started on Lamictal. The side effects got irritating at the max dose - sweatiness and tinnitus plus some anxiety - but still tolerable. I did have a month of migraines when increasing dose from 300mg to 450mg, but then they faded away.

I'm on Effexor now (and have also been on it with lithium in the past). I don't tend to get side-effects from anything actually (guess I'm lucky...) so from that point of view it is fine for me.

I've always had a sneaky suspicion that it doesn't work THAT well. When I confessed this to my pdoc last time, he said it is definitely having an effect because I got hypomanic on it a couple of months ago. Er, right.

Anyway - we discussed replacing it with Wellbutrin for some lingering depression (I really like the sound of this AD - it seems to actually make you feel better, instead of just making you feel less bad, as some do). But he is worried about hypomania, and so he upped the Lamictal instead and that is working great for me so far.

Hope this helped. Long and short of it is: for me Effexor has been 'fine' but not 'amazing'. And I had no problems taking it with lithium.

Effexor made me manic right away! Wellbutrin was only OK at a low dose.

Effexor made me really manic, and Wellbutrin caused me to feel like I was on speed and I couldn't sleep for 2 weeks straight, and I got really psychotic after the 2 weeks.

AD's are just not for me.

I hope one of them works for you.

I've never taken Effexor. I've had experience with Wellbutrin both as XL at 300mg and as SR at 150 (though that may well go up a little soon). The XL I was taking when misdiagnosed, and therefore w/o mood stabilizer. It was the least problematic of the ADs I was put on at the time. SSRIs were a disaster.

The SR version I'm on now in conjunction with lamotrigine for mood stabilization. (The SR because it has a generic and I have no insurance, yada yada). It's helped. We'd tried just increasing the lamotrigine (up to double what it is currently) and it just wasn't really doing the trick. Adding the bupropion seems to be doing the trick.

Everyone's different of course, but that's my personal experience.