Anticonvulsants and AS

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I've heard of a link between Autism and seizures and was wondering if seizure medications also improve the negative symptoms of AS. Has anyone had experiences taking these meds?

I´m taking diazepam at the moment, which has anticonvulsant properties. I see no difference; I only take 2,5 mg a day, though.

I've been on topamax and keppra, currently on zonegran. No difference in the AS. Topamax made me stupider and keppra made me more depressed, though.

I've taken it too with no improvement either. I was hoping it would make me a bit disinhibited and give me better social skills. At least it made me feel sort of high at 5 mg though.

I take Dilantin, and it keeps my seizures under control. I am one of the fortunate ones in that regard. I hope, someday, that I don't have to take it.

I took an anti-convulsant for a while to help with a seizure condition (It wasn't epilepsy because epilepsy is when someone has seizures where the cause is unknown whereas the reason I had the seizures was to do with enecphalitis - a swelling of the brain)

I had a really bad experience with the drug I took (Gabapentin). Whilst I was taking it I felt really doped up and I also had a constant feeling of uneasiness. Then when I stopped taking them I suffered withdrawal symptoms and felt really sick for about a week. The one positive effect was that the pain relief was massive. The condition I was suffering from meant that my whole body was in massive pain and achiness, so the drug did help me get up and about.

Diazepam and Temazepam and other benzodiazepines are funny drugs in terms of seizures. They are what doctors normally give people in status epilepticus i.e. unconcious in a seizure that lasts more than say, 5 minutes but when I was in status epilepticus, I had been taking temazepam for about a week on a fairly strong dose (50mg), I don't know what they did to bring me round, I came to in the ambulance on the way to the hospital so I wasn't sure what they had done although I had a mask on so I don't know if they gave me something with the oxygen. I had only been taking the drug to help with sleep as I had been pretty ill anyway but unable to sleep well. I didn't notice any effect at all from the drug whilst I was taking it however.

I don't think any doctor would prescribe benzos for long term seizure treatment since they can cause withdrawel seizures if you get addicted to them. Some of them are highly addictive too; I got hooked on Xanax in less than 2 weeks.

It wasn't a bennie, but I got withdrawal symptoms from Gabapentin after only taking it for about a month or so.

Strangely enough though, taking a high dose of Temazepam for a week had zero effect on me whatsoever.

When I said that is what doctors give people in status epilepticus; I didn't mean as a long term thing, I meant that is what they give them a shot of in hospital to terminate the seizure and bring the patient out of unconciousness.

I've heard scary things about Gabapenten; doctors were claiming it wasn't addictive but all the people who took it were getting horrible withdrawel effects.

I'm curious about the link between AS and seizures. Is it common? I don't know much about it but I wanted to know if the 2 disorders were related.

Yeah, I was really sick as a dog coming off Gabapentin.

I don't know about the link between AS and seizures but there is a massive link between Autism and seizures. I used to know someone who worked in a special ed school and many (if not most) of the kids with autism suffered from seizures. Some of the more profoundly autistic kids seemed to suffer even worse from seizures and had several a day that were immune to being controlled by drugs.

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That's interesting to me because they don't know what causes Autism, but could possibly look at shared disoders like seizures to find out the causes. Seizure disorders are much better understood and that might be one link to figuring out the mystery.

No, that is the problem; there is very little understood about seizure disorders. They know the loose mechanics of what a seizure is but that is about it. If anything, seizures are probably worse understood than autism. Most of the medical knowledge concerning seizures is fairly superficial; there is no real knowledge as to the root cause or biological mechanism that causes most seizures.

Epilepsy by definition means a seizure disorder where the root cause of the seizures is unknown so the doctors know very little about why most people (Epileptics) have seizures (unless caused by an injury or as in my case, caused by an illness affecting the brain tissue)

Even drug treatment is pretty much hit or miss; the guy I saw was a consultant neurologist and he admitted to me that when prescribing drugs for seizure disorders it was just a case of trial and error e.g. try out different anti-convulsants and see how they work out.

I tried Lamictal I thought it was a wonder drug to begin with, it seemed to cut down the noise and confusion in my head, I felt clearer. After a while my memory was affected and I experienced cognitive blunting which I found annoying so i quit the anti-convulsants.

I have tried Valpro and it didn't work. Then I tried Tegretol and I couldn't stay awake even though it was a small dose. I am taking Lamictal now and it works well. It's expensive, that's the only thing I don't like.