Psychosis from Wellbutrin

I was prescribed Wellbutrin a few years ago. I was also trying to get sober from drinking, so that probably had some effects with it and around it. Definitely didn’t help. But I was on it after getting sober also.

After about 4 months of taking it I had jittering in my knees when going up stairs or bending. But I also was starting to see and hear things, like things moving on the corners of my vision, blurs. If it was dark or low light I almost always thought I saw shadows of people. They looked like if you saw a bright light and closed your eyes—the afterimage. I thought I was losing my mind from going sober or the stress of life with drinking. But I had problems drinking for almost 10 years. My family has that history, but none of us have any psychosis or schizophrenia. It never popped up, and I was actually trying to get sober at this time, not in the thick of it.

I repeatedly told this to my psychiatrist and all they did was put me on more meds. I started getting more outgoing at points—apparently a sign of psychosis. I would get more talkative for long periods of time, I was able to wake up at 5am off almost no sleep, and couldn’t sleep well. I was never a morning person and this was almost impossible for me to wake up that early normally.

Eventually during Christmas in 2023 I had a full psychotic break. I thought complete nonsense was some deep truth about reality. I kept saying certain statements like it was a key to knowing everything. I can still remember some and it just sounds like complete nothing, or just words together that don’t make any sense. But I remember how sure I was of all of it. I had vivid waking dreams of crazy stuff and like the universe—I don’t know, it’s hard to describe. It felt like it made so much sense, more sure than I ever felt about anything before or since, but it was all just complete bullshit. I kept looking at all the corners of the room for some reason, I argued with an avatar of my flawed self in my mind, I tried to sleep and fell asleep while still being awake somehow, felt like I went underwater kinda but in like an ether. Eventually I came out of it slowly.

I had to research myself that this medication, out of bad side effects, 20% of the bad ones could result in all of this. I was so incredibly frustrated and would have been furious if I wasn’t so tired. I was going through rehab, getting sober, trying to find a job, and thought I was losing my mind and broke it from drinking. I still have reactions from that time, like I might have heard or saw something that wasn’t there. I had to learn to trust my mind, again, after already doing that with alcohol. I literally failed a training course for a job because I was reading made up questions and answers from my brain. They went through it with me again and I’m like, this isn’t what I read.

I didn’t trust my psychiatrist. I said so many times I had no history of this, ever, with anyone in my family either. We all went through stuff and harder times and none of this popped up. I had to teach myself about a side effect they should’ve known, or at least researched, themselves. I had to pay them for care and go crazy and save myself. I went to urgent care and told them everything and said I refuse to be on this for one more day, and to just be told what to expect from withdrawals. They said it was ok and to at least call the psych to tell them. I had no withdrawals—I remember just slowly getting sanity back. It made getting sober a nightmare, and I thought I was going crazy at a time I was supposed to be getting better.