Keppra is ruining my marriage

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I so feel for you. My son held his head and screamed when on Tegetrol. He wasn't violent but it took both of us to cam him down and hold him. Does your husband have a neurologist? Look into the Neuropace Neurotransmitter. My son got one 11 years ago and, thanks to God, has not has a seizure since. My prayers to you.
 
Hi Epilepticwife! Thanks for starting this thread, wishing you all the best with you and your family.!
 
EW,
My condolences on the loss of your husband. You certainly have been through a lot in these past few months. Will be thinking of you.
Hugs,
Cindy
 
I believe there are a few people out there claiming B vitamins help them avoid the Kepprage.

I don't know if the stuff is a choline inhibitor or an choline metabolism accelerant. Some say it is an inhibitor, but I totally suspect they are wrong based on the fact that nearly every other drug in that class is an accelerant. That may help as well. Adjusting choline in the diet, either way.

The rage is probably somehow connected to dopamine.


I did a quick search and came up with this. I'd suspect this may be of interest.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrenergic_storm (only your situation is probably much less severe) If that's the case, I bet more cheese in the diet would be an easy fix. Cheese, cheese and more cheese. It has precursors to dopamine in it called l-tyrosine.

There isn't much one can do when the rage starts. When I rage, I get nearly uncontrollable urges to throw things and sometimes I do. I try to go into other rooms away from people and take my frustrations out there. My rages are not directly connected to Keppra, but my experience with that class of drugs, has given me similar rage sensations that I currently feel in other scenarios related to different classes of drugs.


Don't be confrontational or take it personally. Get away and give them time to come out of it. If they cannot separate the drugs being the culprit to their rage from you, then yeah they probably need counselling to get issues that otherwise would not surface without the reduction of inhibitions, before the rage hits and they become erratic. But getting issues out, before they surface before a rage attack, isn't going to stop thier rage fits, it may just simply redirect the rage towards different targets a little.
 
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hopeless

my boyfriend of 7 yrs we have been through so much but I don't know if our relationship is going to last through this, keppra is the only thing that is stopping his seizures but he is having horrible side effects of aggression and irritability and depression, I don't even know how to explain how bad it is, ever since he started taking keppra he is a completely different person. The other medications he was taking before keppra weren't stopping his seizures and he was having extremely painful cramps and insomnia side effects to those ones. I don't know what is worse, he can't live with having 6 grand mal seizures a day like he was and he can't live with what the medications are doing to him, he is terrified to tell the doctors about the side effects hes having to the keppra because he's scared they will put him on a different medication that will have worse side effects or that it wont work and his seizures will start again. We are not even getting any help, I have had to be his caretaker because there is no one else, he isn't getting disability benefits at all. When his seizures stopped I thought the nightmare was over little did I know it was just the beginning of the end.
 
I hate to say this, but if the aggression and irritability are indeed that bad, then moving to another drug is what he will likely need to do. On the positive side, the fact that he has found one drug (keppra) that does indeed control his seizures, from what I've heard, does increase the likelihood that another drug may work for him as well (hopefully with less side effects).

With each individual it is trial and error finding the drug that works best with the least amount of side effects, and it can take time to do so. In the meantime, as has been mentioned, you may try a good b-complex vitamin, as that seems to lessen the anger associated with some people who use keppra. That said, if his reaction is that strong to keppra, he will need to try something else.

How many other drugs has he been on previously (that did not work out), and which ones were they?
 
keppra is one of the few drugs that work for me, but the side effects are not worth it, like the rage, and I and an extremely calm person so to have that much of difference in my personality just wasn't worth it. but I did find a lot of comfort foods earned their names with some of those drugs like real mac and cheese, club sandwiches. a lot of these drugs are just hard to get just used to for reasons like that
 
Hello, I'm new here and am very concerned about my daughter's behavior since starting keppra. Her issue is not anger but very loud talking and boastfulness to the point that no one can hardly stand to be around her. She seems to be a little delusional at times as well. Has anyone experienced this? She has an appt. with a neurologist but it's not until the end of October. Any advice is much appreciated!
 
My advice is simple. If the side effects of the medication you are on are intolerable to yourself or others and are extremely severe, go to urgent care or the ER and see a doctor to get the medication changed.
 
I had a truly horrific experience with Keppra: about a year and a half ago I suffered some virus that left me with post-viral encephalitis and lesions in my right temporal lobe, which resulted in a seizure disorder. I spent two weeks in the hospital while subjected to every test known in an effort to determine the pathogen (including five MRIs, two spinal taps, two CT scans, a PT scan, myriad blood tests...) only to be told "It was some virus that is either not know by medical science or some mutation of one that is known."

For my first two days in the hospital I was put on Keppra and shortly thereafter became clinically psychotic. I remember some of it, such as lying on the bed, screaming and raving, insisting that there was a force field against the left side of the bed that I was trying to roll my body, with great force, against; of course there was no force field, and it took all of my wife's strength to push me back onto the bed for the four hours or so I kept pushing against her. I also started screaming at her saying, "YOU KNOW ME BETTER THAN ANYONE, AND IF YOU DON'T SEE THE FORCEFIELD THEN YOU DON'T LOVE ME AND YOU'VE NEVER LOVED ME!!!" I remember the neurologist, while I was standing on the bed and raving about something, saying, "By whatever God you believe in, please, please sit down!" It was only when he said, "Your father and your wife would want you to sit down" that I finally did. And he only knew to say this because before I was given any medication, I told the neurologist that if any decisions needed to be made about me, should I become irrational, first ask my father (a doctor himself), then ask my wife what should be done.

I then lapsed into a period of psychosis that I have no memory of – a period that my wife said was so horrific that she doesn't want to tell me about and which she assured me I don't want to hear, so, to this day, I have no idea what I said or did. The only thing she did tell me was that I went into my bathroom (I was given a private room because the doctors were afraid to put me in a room with anyone, not knowing what I was suffering from), crouched in the corner, and cried, terrified about various aspects of my life. She said it took a large male nurse to pretty much carry me back to my bed.

I remained in this psychotic state for about 24 hours. When I regained semi consciousness I was convinced I was dead, and cried nonstop despite two friends of mine standing by my bedside trying to find every argument they could think of to convince me that I was alive. As a comedic note, one of the two friends, becoming exasperated with me, turned to the other with a smile and jokingly said, "If he's so convinced he's dead, why don't we just kill him?" (I only found out about this many weeks later, after I was fully recovered...).

Around this point my dad asked the neurologist whether my bizarre behavior / psychosis could be attributed to the Keppra,. The answer was "No." About fifteen minutes later my dad got a call from the neurologist saying, "We're taking your son off Keppra NOW." He must have Googled "Keppra psychosis," because Google will verify that it's been known to occur (though nothing as extreme as what I was experiencing). I was then put on Depakote.

There were about eight friends and family members in my room now—"now" being a relative term, because my sense of time was completely warped—and I saw everything in exaggerated colors, with the makeup of the women in the room appearing thick, fluorescent, and grotesque. Also, people kept shifting, such that one friend's wife might have appeared next to a different husband. Just when I was convinced this was reality, the couples shifted such that couples were again rearranged. Just when I was convinced that, "ok, THIS is reality, the couples shifted again. This shifting happened several times throughout the evening.

When the phantasmagoric colors and people shifting ended, the auditory hallucinations started. I heard the same four songs over and over and over and over... One was a Louis Armstrong / Ella Fitzgerald duet, the three were also real songs, but I can't remember now which songs they were. It had never occurred to me up until this point that when people "hear voices" that the voices come from outside the person's head. I had always assumed the voices were some sort of interior monologue, but the songs sounded as if they were coming from a loud radio that I could not turn off. Hours of this were making me crazier and crazier.

At this point the hospital I was at realized they did have the resources to handle me, so they sent me to a hospital that could perform a 72-hour, video-monitored EEG on me. The songs were still playing as I sat strapped in the ambulance. They were making me crazy, and I knew I could not go on much longer with them playing, let alone the rest of my life. I started telling my wife, "if the songs don't stop I'm going to fucking kill myself. I swear to god I will go to the top of a building and fucking jump off of it. I can't take this anymore: I swear to god I WILL fucking kill myself. I started punching myself in the head, tying to get the music to stop, while continuing to tell my wife that I was going to fucking kill myself. And I would have. I really would have. I realized that when people hear voices in their heads, telling them to do things, exactly how powerful those voices are.

Fortunately, shortly after arriving at the new hospital, the songs stopped. I was still very weak, and my sense of time was still very distorted. After a day or two I was talking to the neurologist, and asked her about her experience with Keppra psychosis. Whereas the first neurologist was unfamiliar with it this one said, "Oh, we see it all the time – we call it the 'Keppra Crazies,' though I have NEVER seen or heard about a case as severe as yours."

The EEG revealed that I definitely had disturbances, and the brain MRIs revealed that I had post-viral encephalitis and lesions, primarily in my right temporal lobe, brought about a virus that, to this day, cannot be classified.

When I was relatively stable and able to act and talk coherently, I said to my wife, "I fee like this is the worst day of my life." She replied, "I feel like this one of the best." When I, surprised, said, "WHY?" She replied, "Because I have you back." Nobody knew whether my psychosis would be permanent, or what kind of life I might be confined to as a result of either the lesions and/or the results of the Keppra.

I am now on Depakote, and, other than occasional, minor hand tremors, am doing well. When forget to take my medication I have seizures. A friend of mine who is a pharmacist said, "They're called 'Side Effects' but they're not: they're effects, they're just not the desired effects."

To answer anyone's question as to whether Keppra can completely change a person's personality, the answer is yes. Absolutely, categorically yes.
 
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Can you see doc on your own explain I did with my husband.Patient cofindentalilt would not discuss medical notes but they found a reason to call him in we got bottom of problem and he never knew
 
OMG, Post-Viral.

Thank you so much for sharing that harrowing account of the Keppra-Crazies.

My doctor and I are discussing medication changes. This is good info to have.
 
I'm glad that my post was helpful to you, and to anyone who has any questions about how severely and adversely Keppra can warp a person.
 
I never been on keppra and all the things I read on here I never want go on it.THat psychotic trauma sounds awfull Pv...The nearest thing I had was when I took amaltryptolin I thought I was not real it was horrible so how you felt must been nightmare
 
It was, which makes me that much more grateful that I can take Depakote with barely any side effects.
 
Keppra makes me a terrible person. Killing me married life as well.

But i punch holes in walls, smash glass dishes, etc.

Ive been sent home from work and walked 18 miles in 22 degree weather. Took 5hr 45min.
 
I'm going to ask about Lamictal myself. I do not like the side effects of Keppra.
 
I had auras with Keppra. Dr. switched me to Dilantin and it worked for some time and then the seizures returned. Then to Depakote, depression and outburst of rage with Depakote at the slightest cause. Am on combo of vim pat and trying to cut back on Depakote. I guess there are no epileptic drugs that don't have some kind of side effects?
 
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