Bupropion (Wellbutrin) and the heart

I was prescribed 150 mg Bupropion SR twice daily about 4 -5 weeks ago. Initially i had some unsettling side effects, mostly chest pain and anxiety (and at one point my heart rate sped up to a ridiculous rate but was beating so soft I almost couldn't feel it when I checked my pulse on my neck). But after a couple weeks the problems diminished and I was actually feeling my social anxiety problems getting better. I didn't freak out so much when I was called on in class, even if I didn'tk now the answer or couldn't think of something to say. I found it easier to think well enough in order to talk if somebody started a conversation with me (before bupropion my mind would just stall completely if I was ever in a situation where I had to tlak to somebody I didn't know VERY well).

After years of problems I thoguht I finally found a solution, or at least something that would help me get over my pretty severe problems. Except a few days ago I started getting chest pains again and feeling a little bit agitated. The night of the day that started I went for a run to try to releive the anxiety/agitation I was feeling. It wasn't anything too severe but I felt like running it off anyway. I ran pretty far compared to what I normally run, and while I was running the chest pain vanished. When I finished I was about 10 minutes from my house. Halfway through the walk back the chest pains suddenly came on again, more severe than before, then just disappeared after a minute or two.

The next day I felt chest pains again in the second half of the day, and when I was reading that night I suddenly felt very faint (similar to the experience I had when I was starting out on the drug). It felt like I was close to passing out and I had a hard time thinking or understanding what was going. I knew where I was and everything but when my roomate tried to talk to me about something I couldn't really process what he was saying. IT took about 10 minutes for that to fade. After that the chest pain and heart pounding was gone but I felt short of breath, although I'm not sure this is an accurate way to describe it. . . it almost felt like the signals my brain would send to my diaphram telling to take air in or push it out were reduced somehow. It felt like IH ad to put more effort into breathing even though my lungs and trachea didn't seem in any way constricted and it didn't seem like I had to take in any more air than normal. What really bothered me was when I tried to concentrate on something other than breathing I would just stop breathing until I noticed the feeling that Iwasn't getting enough oxygen. This kept me up for hours that night as every time I'd start to fall asleep I'd stop breathing then wake up after a few seconds. This hasn't happeend since that night but I have felt kind of short of breath in general a few times.

A couple days ago I woke up in the morning with my heart beating very hard and slow, probably like 40 bpm (60 - 100 is normal). I could feel the beats pounding in my chest and neck and head, and it even felt like I could feel the pressure in my arteries in the places I just mentioend - like with each beat I could feel them stretching out further than theyr'e supposed to (or at least further than it felt like they should have been). It happened again that night.

This morning I woke up from a horrifying dream where I basically saw a good friend of mine having his arms and legs broken (by bending them backwards and twisting them around) one at a time. And when all of them were done the person doing it would start over and twist around my friend's already broken arms moer and more. When I woke up my heart was POUNDING extremely hard, but also very slow (again probably around 40 bpm) - the heart rate seemed the opposite of what it should have been considering the dream I had. For a few minutes I really thought my arteries were going to explode or my heart was just going to give out from all the pressure or something. Throughout the day today I didn't have the problem so much except for the last hour or so before my second dose. When I got home and started working on some programming homework I felt my heart pounding hard and slow again.

While the medication is going strong in my system it seems my heart doesn't pound so much but my heart rate tends to be fast - but every once in a while beats at a normal rate (but also a little harder). I've been having chest pains on and off, more at night and in the morning though it seems they might originate from my chest muscles (or even the bones) rather than the heart - I know for the past couple days the chest pain was usually accompanied by this feeling that I need to crack my chest (in the same way you might crack your knuckles). At first I thought this was ridiculous but this morning while taking a music theory test my ribs, or my sternum, or my collar bone - something in my chest cracked quite noticably. It was a pretty strange feeling (cause obviously I've never experienced that before) but also felt kind of releiving.

Sometimes it seems like the chest pains correspond with heartbeats or times when my heart is pounding really hard. Other times it doesn't. Even if I ignore the pains though, just the massively powerful heartbeats and the way I feel them tearing through the arteries in my neck and chest is enough to make me really worried. Right at this moment my heart rate and strength seem perfectly normal and I'm feeling no pains whatsoever. However about 10 minutes I was was feeling a slight chest pain for a bit, and a couple hours before that my heart was POUNDING slowly (as I mentioned already).

I plan on going to the doctor tomorrow and seeing what he has to say about this. I'm really disappointed that the one thing I've finally come across that helps with my ridiculously extreme social anxiety and depression might also be killing me. I'm hoping the doctor will tell me this is a normal side effect and that it will fade, but by the way it feels I think it might be serious. I guess if it comes to it I'll stop to save my life, but that will also mean going back to a life of constant fear and rejection and rock-bottom self esteem. I'm almost not sure its worth it.

Has anyone else used bupropion/wellbutrin and had similar problems? Did you ahve to stop taking it or did it go away? Keep in mind I'm at about week 5 now - I already had the side effects go away once but it seems the most disturbing ones have returned.

Oh by the way, the chest pains just suddenly came on again along with a feelign that my blood pressure increased a little. Fun!

 

That really stinks that the one thing that helped could be ruining you man. I'm interested in what it is after reading all that so let us know! Other than that I offer no help here..

 

Hope the doctor visit helped. I wonder if you could just smoke a little weed. For a buzz, I'm a pharmaceuticals fan, but hitting your brain with constant, everday doses of antidepressants worries me. What kind of long-term chemistry changes are they causing?

 

real_large:
I used to smoke lots of weed. Because of the depression I tried stopping, which helped for about a week before I realized that none of my problems went anywhere. I tried smoking after starting bupropion but I can't do it anymore - the combination is like a crack in the head with a sledge hammer. The last time I smoked while on this stuff I felt like one of my brain hemispheres was growing and my body felt like syrup and I was basically having a panic attack that, though I knew it was just the drugs fucking with me, I couldn't control.

If you meant smoking weed instead of antidepressants. . . well like I said, I used t odo that and all it did was make me dull and spend all my money. There were days when weed was a wonderful, wonderful thing for me but anymore it just kind of makes my mind feel a little numb and also makes me question my sanity - thats another thing, I was starting to get some pretty weird feelings/thoughts/sensations that would mostly go away when I'd stop smoking. I think maybe it was a dissociative disorder which probably had somethin to do with the mixture of depression and marijuana.

As for the doctor visit. . . I stopped at the university health center yesterday and the lady in screening said that the prescribing doctor is supposed to handle these things. So I got sent upstairs to psychological services where the receptionist took a message. The psychiatrist called me later and I explained what was happening to me. He basically said it was very strange and he'd never heard of anything like that before, and that bupropion isn't known to have cardiovascular effects or cause high blood pressure.

Funny, because most of the lists of side-effects I found online included hypertension and heart palpitations, and I've even seen things like heart block in some of them. Apparently there have been a few (though rare) cases of deaths in people taking bupropion - they couldn't be sure the bupropion was involved, of course but. . .
All of those were over 40 though I think. I'm 21 but I'm also predisposed to heart disease - my mother's father died when my mom was like 18, and my dad's father had some heart problems though that isn't what ultimately killed him.

Anyway, he told me to try taking my dose down to one tablet a day instead of two and see if that would alleviate the effects. He seems to be operating on the premise that the problems are psychosomatic - probably because he came to similar conclusions when I reported chest pains after starting SSRI's a couple months ago. "They're not known to cause that" he said.

On the bright side I haven't been experienceing the chest pains or feeling of explosive blood pressure so much yesterday or today, though it didn't go away completely (yet) - and I'm still taking the two a day. I think I"ll stay at that at least another day or two to see if this problem will go away, becuse it seems like it might be doing just that. If not then Il'l move down to one a day like the doctor said.

 

Great to hear back from you. Keep your chin up bro ....