(Sorry for the wall of text, I really want you to understand)

I take no offense. It's not something easy to describe, or relatable in most circumstances. My seizure was a grand mal.

Imagine being completely fine, talking, and going about your business. I happened to be sitting next to my husband, talking, and stood up to walk over to bed for the night. That's when everything cut off.

I apparently stood up, cried out, and collapsed with my head hitting a trashcan before I fell to the floor. My husband thought I had merely tripped before I started convulsing. He held my head in his lap for a few minutes while panicking himself, on the phone with 911. After struggling for minutes, I suddenly became very still and struggled to breath. My face was completely pale, shallow, labored breathing filled the next few minutes.

Then suddenly, I woke up. My head in my husbands lap on the floor. He was crying...I reached up to his face and wiped a few tears, smiling and concerned, and was said "Babe...it's okay, everything is okay..." and started kissing him. It never dawned on me that it was strange I was on the floor. That he was crying. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary despite not knowing (or not even wondering about the events leading up to this) why he was staring at me like he had seen a ghost. He held my shoulders, hugged me while still crying, explaining that I had fallen into a seizure, appeared to stop breathing, that he thought I had died. He told me that he thought he lost me. I responded in complete disbelief, with no memory of any such event. I started to cry, muscles aching, though that was the least of my concern at that moment. I became extremely disheveled trying to connect any memory or sign of how I could not even remember the last few minutes, that my brain didn't alarm me, wasn't alarming me, that anything was wrong. Had I have been alone, I would probably never known this happened to me.

Sirens echoed outside and paramedics stormed into the house. They attached all sorts of machines to my body, and I was still crying in fear and surprise. Without going into too much detail, they asked me my name. I remembered my name. My age, I had to think about for a second. Who the president was, I remembered.

"Do you know what year is it?" I thought about it. My thoughts raced trying to remember an answer to such a simple question, getting a 'bounce back; 404 NOT FOUND' from my brain with no answer, and I became increasingly scared at the prospect of not knowing. "No...I don't know." They asked a few more questions with the same result. While memory loss is a common after effect of seizures, that does not make it any less terrifying. I could barely remember who I was. In the confusion, I became very irritated in response to their questions. I ultimately refused a ride to the hospital in the ambulance, but had my husband drive me after calming down some. They ruled out other causes with multiple MRI's, CT scan, EEG, blood work, etc. It was the Wellbutrin. That day changed my life, forever.

Why did that seizure force me to end my, until then, extremely positive track record with Wellbutrin? Because I was reduced to a shell of myself. A shadow. Fear controlled my life, worry that I might have another such event. What if it happened when I was alone? Driving? It's been months since this happened, and I wish I recorded in more detail all the emotions and recovery to share with others and to remind myself. I felt dead behind my eyes. My entire family, peers, bosses, all noticed personality changes. Physically, I had severe muscle twitches, spasms, vocal tics where I would start a word and have no words able to leave my mouth. That was probably one of the worst parts. Your brain coordinates a sentence, starts to speak, and you cut yourself off. You can't even force the letters out of your mouth. Emotionally, it was like I couldn't trust my medication to not betray me. This caused more stress and anxiety than the medication was prescribed to fix. It affected my short term memory, something I'm still dealing with that to this day. My confidence in driving, normal and daily tasks, even walking felt like something I had to remaster like a damn toddler. Stairs, in particular, were actually scary for no real reason other than I always felt as though I was going to fall. Another completely irrational fear was holding anything sharp or breakable, as I was paranoid of falling onto it and seriously hurting myself. Even my vocabulary and spelling suffered somewhat. I cried all the time. I had panic attacks for the first time in years and was overwhelmed by things with little provocation. Emotionally, it's like I had to relearn how to become myself again. It's been over 7 months since my seizure and only now has natural joy and feeling of being 'normal' and confident to participate in society as an adult started to go back into autopilot. It's like my brain has had to reboot over the last few months, allowing once minuscule tasks that I've had to completely overthink become mindless and ordinary once again. And it's the greatest relief.

I took so much for granted. It hurt my marriage, as I had essentially become a different person in a matter of minutes. Luckily, he has stuck by me, and we are stronger having overcome such an event and I feel like I am practically back to being myself again.

Another thing to consider about seizures, is that they don't just affect you. It heavily affected him, watching me struggle feeling helpless to the situation, that he possibly watched me close to death. That, my friend, is traumatizing for something who's never seen a seizure, nevertheless have one happen to someone they love with no warning. I hate that he ever had to experience this, and I wouldn't want to ever put anyone in the position to be my safety net if it were a regular event. There are families who experience this all the time when they care for someone with epilepsy, but I doubt they wouldn't recommend that life for anyone.

Also, not being able to drive yourself...my doctor brought it up in conversation about my choice to discontinue using wellbutrin that he would have to strongly recommend I not drive myself anywhere (as to if this can be legally enforced against someone's will I do not know, but it's not irrational to not want someone who could randomly seize to discontinue driving). He didn't have to say it was because you could easily kill yourself or others if you blanked out without warning on a highway. That kind of restriction was off the table in my mind.

I think of my depression as being potentially lethal. Comparatively speaking, I feel like seizures are relatively tolerable. I feel like I'd rather be happy and get an occasional seizure than be in the depths of despair.

As I've said before, if it works for you, by all means, continue. I'm very happy for those who can take any medication with no serious side effects and it help them live a better life. My main message is to be aware of risks and symptoms, and to talk with your doctor if you notice any changes. Wellbutrin isn't joking around when they say it lowers your seizure threshold. If it helps you, I am happy for you. It definitely helped me through some of the worst times of my life. Depression is terrible. To answer your query, comparatively speaking, having to endure the kind of anxiety and depression continuing to take Wellbutrin caused me, with the possibility that kind of fear would control me forever, seemed worse than death. It was like being a ghost. It was not tolerable for me, and it drained any happiness from my life until I could be sure that it would never happen again. It's been a few months now living without it after ramping off with a plan from my doctor. The tics have completely stopped, the spasms have stopped, and as I said, I feel like I've been given a second chance at life. I'm extremely optimistic about the future, have the most wonderful and supportive husband and family, and have no depression. Escaping that experience gave me a different outlook on my life. That being said, am I happy to have had that seizure (to phrase badly) to push me into being happy without the use of medication? Absolutely not. Wellbutrin didn't make me artificially happy, and without having a seizure, I would probably still be taking it. It's an extremely invaluable tool that helped me and still helps thousands of people, and I'm assuming you're one of them.

I haven't been able to even put into words how many more sides of this issue I have. Depression, of course, is an extremely personal thing and is different for everyone. That being said, I'm sure some people handle having a seizure (not speaking for epileptics here) with more ease and grace. But I cannot be alone in how this affected me.