I’ve been working on this post of the past couple of months and I want to start off by saying that Trokendi and Topamax are two of the most prescribed medications for migraines and for some people they can be life-changing. I am part of a Migraine support Facebook group where people compare medications and I have heard fantastic reviews for both Topamax and Trokendi. If you are suffering from headaches or migraines please listen to your doctor and be willing to try new treatment options even if you have heard they may not work and remember that this is just one person’s experience with the medication.

You can find my migraine story here if you’d like a little background information on my personal journey with chronic migraines.

I’ve had two Neurologists recommend that I take Trokendi XR. They would have had me take Topamax but my insurance doesn’t cover it. I really wasn’t sure if I wanted to try Tokendi but I figured it was worth a shot.

I started off by taking 25 mg and increased my dosage gradually over a few weeks until I maxed out at 100 mg. Each time the dosage increased by 25 mg and I carefully followed the directions provided by my neurologist. The picture at the top of this post shows a couple of the sample packets that my neurologist provided. He also gave me a card that had a number I could call in order to receive Trokendi free for one year! I ended up calling the card and it was very simple to setup and for my pharmacy to figure out.

After a couple of days of taking the 25 mg of Trokendi I began to notice my fingertips tingling. After a week my toes and feet also tingled. It felt like my hands were asleep all the time and I had a hard time being on my computer at work which is how I spend my 8+ hour day. As the dosage increased the tingling also increased to the point where it was really painful.

The second thing I noticed were my sleeping habits. I am generally a pretty good sleeper, especially when I have a migraine. But when I was on Trokendi I could go days without sleeping. I was so uncomfortable that falling asleep wasn’t possible. If I did sleep for a few hours I would wake up super early and not be able to go back to sleep. Some days I’d be so exhausted when I got home from work that I immediately went to bed and slept all night. There was really no in between, I either didn’t sleep or I slept way too much.

My sense of taste and smell were the next things to go. My taste buds changed pretty quickly and I started to have aversions to food that I had always loved. The types of food that I could tolerate were few and far between. For example, I have always loved the lime tortilla chips but once I started this medicine they tasted so bad that I couldn’t eat them and still can’t to this day. Taste began playing into smell in November when we went to the casino for Brett’s birthday. I had been tasting metal for awhile but at the casino my senses were introduced to cigarette smoke and for weeks after all I could taste and smell were cigarettes. It was miserable!

I will say that my pain was different. I won’t say that my pain went away but it did change. I had more ice pick headaches where it felt like someone was stabbing me in the forehead. The pain was muted by the side effects but it was still constantly present. I had less migraines on Trokendi but the pain of my headaches was still unbearable.

The major side effect that I had heard about with Topamax was brain fog. Trokendi gave me the worst brain fog. I’d be in the middle of a sentence and forget what I was saying. I couldn’t find the correct words and it became frustrating and terrifying.

However, one of my worst side effects was depression. Suddenly I was crying and over-emotional without even thinking about it. I texted my mom one day saying that I think I needed help because I felt so down and I just couldn’t help it. I’m lucky to have such great family and friends who really stepped up during this time to make sure that I was fed and taken care of because I no longer felt like taking care of myself. Because of the depression I knew I needed to be weaned off Trokendi for good.

I’m once again so grateful to have a job with unlimited sick days and the option to work from home. The support of my team during this time was amazing because I was sick the whole entire time I took Trokendi. There was one day where I hadn’t slept in a couple of nights and the thought of dragging myself to work made me break down. I texted my bosses that I wasn’t feeling well and ended up in bed for over 24 hours.

After about 6 weeks on Trokendi I went back in to see my neurologist. After explaining the tingling and depression he decided that I needed to be weaned off of it right away. I spent another couple of weeks weaning off the Trokendi. It’s been a couple of months now and the majority of the side effects have gone away. I still have left over food aversions and my taste hasn’t come back all the way yet.

I really wanted to share my honest experience of what it was like to take Trokendi XR. If you struggle from migraines or any health related issues you know how hard it is to find good advice about what you are going through. I scoured the internet for information about Trokendi and talked to two neurologists about it. I’m by no means an expert but this is how I felt while I was experiencing the effects of Trokendi.

Have you taken Trokendi or Topamax for migraines? What was your experience like?