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Am I Crazy or Was It Just My Diet?
On inflammation, the body, and the lived experience of mental health
It started with a rash. Actually, it started with a fever. To be honest, I’m not sure which one came first. I felt the fever long before I looked in the mirror and the rash was on my face. You can’t just see your own face.
When I saw it, I shrugged it off. I must’ve had some sort of flu. The rash was a heat rash in response to the fever, which was steadily climbing over 103 F. That you can’t get a heat rash from a fever did not then occur to me. Nor did it occur to me that, approximately two weeks earlier, I’d been prescribed Lamictal to treat my newly-diagnosed Bipolar disorder, type 2.
When the fever hit 104, I called my best friend. I don’t remember which one of us thought of the Lamictal first, but as soon as we realized, she immediately came over and drove me to the hospital.
Like many pharmaceuticals, Lamictal — generic name, lamotrigine — is mostly harmless. Originally designed as an anticonvulsant to treat epilepsy in adults, lamotrigine also proved effective as a mood stabilizer for patients with Bipolar disorder. It’s been shown to reduce the symptoms of hypomania and severe mood swings, and is considered by many psychiatrists — my own, at the time, among them — an effective treatment…
