Wellbutrin Index | Brand and Generic Availability ›
Crazy Meds Comprehensive Wellbutrin pages

This is our summary of Wellbutrin. Clicking on a “More…” link will take you to a page with greater detail. The Comprehensive Wellbutrin pages contain the information from all of the “More…” pages.

1.  Brand & Generic Names; Drug Class

US brand name:	Wellbutrin
Generic name:	bupropion hydrochloride
What is Wellbutrin (bupropion hydrochloride)?	Wellbutrin (bupropion hydrochloride) is in the Antidepressants class of drugs.

More about Wellbutrin’s generic availability, worldwide trade names, and more

2.  What is Wellbutrin (bupropion hydrochloride) used for

2.1  US FDA approved treatment(s)

Major depressive disorder. Wellbutrin XL is approved for seasonal affective disorder (SAD)

2.2  Popular off-label uses

Weight loss, Bipolar depression, ADD/ADHD, Crohn’s disease, Restless leg syndrome (RLS), Pathological gambling, Treating SSRI/SNRI-induced sexual dysfunction,

More about Wellbutrin’s approved & off-label uses

3.  When will Wellbutrin (bupropion hydrochloride) start working?

3.1  How long until Wellbutrin starts working

Usually two-three weeks. Like all antidepressants you should give it up to a month, maybe six weeks, before giving up, barring any really nasty side effects or you can tell nothing is happening at all.

3.2  Will Wellbutrin really work for what I have?

Pretty freaking good. The side effects or something else may make it suck too much to keep taking it, or there’s too much potential for trouble in the first place, but Wellbutrin is one of those meds that usually work. Sometimes a little too well.

More about how long until, and how well will Wellbutrin work; and how Wellbutrin compares with other drugs

4.  How to take and stop taking Wellbutrin (bupropion hydrochloride)

4.1  How to take Wellbutrin

The initial dose of Wellbutrin SR (bupropion hydrochloride) is 150mg in the morning. If that is tolerated the target dose of 300mg a day may be tried as early as four days later, split into two 150mg doses with at least eight hours between each dose. But you really should wait at least a week. If after four weeks there is no improvement you may opt to go up to 400mg a day, split into two 200 mg doses. The initial dose of the older immediate release flavor of Wellbutrin (bupropion hydrochloride) is 100 mg a day, which may be increased by 100 mg a day with a titration period of at least three days. With the immediate release flavor you can really play around with things, dosing you in 75–150 mg increments three to four times a day with a minimum of four hours between each dose up to a maximum of 450 mg a day. The dosage for the XL form follows that of the SR form, except that it is taken once a day.

I really think you should wait at least seven-eight days (see steady state below) before going up to the next higher dosage. The wacky metabolism of Wellbutrin (bupropion hydrochloride), and the fact that it’s one of the metabolites that works on norepinephrine tells me that you should wait until things settle down in your system first.

4.2  How to stop taking Wellbutrin

Based on its complex pharmacokinetics, your doctor should be recommending that you reduce your dosage by 100–150mg a day (for the more popular SR and XL forms, 75mg for the immediate release form), every week if you need to stop taking Wellbutrin, if not more slowly than that. There have been reports of more than the usual problems that come from stopping any med abruptly, or just too quickly.

More about taking and discontinuing Wellbutrin

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5.  Wellbutrin’s (bupropion hydrochloride’s) pros and cons

5.1  Pros

Low chance of sexual side effects, unless you consider making you hornier with or without premature/spontaneous orgasms sexual side effects. None of the weight gain associated with SSRIs & SNRIs. Often a very effective and relatively fast-acting antidepressant, as dopamine and norepinephrine reuptake inhibition are frequently part of, if not the answer for a lot of people.

5.2  Cons

Wellbutrin can be used recreationally, so it can be abused. It has to be avoided by anyone with an eating disorder or other addictive behaviors. The abuse potential is a serious problem, as Wellbutrin is one of the few modern antidepressants that can kill you if you take too much.

5.3  Interesting stuff your doctor probably didn’t tell you

Bupropion hydrochloride is also sold as Zyban, a drug used to quit smoking. Depending on your HMO schedule or your health insurance, you may want to get a prescription for Zyban instead of Wellbutrin. Why? Sometimes it’s cheaper. Sometimes you may not have any mental health coverage on your health insurance but you can get drugs to quit smoking. And some insurance companies have a points system like car insurance. If you get too crazy, your rates go way up, but if you do something positive like try to quit smoking, your rates go down. So check with the person who works in your doctor’s office about the rates and the system, and see if you need to game the system with a Zyban prescription instead of a Wellbutrin SR prescription. It’s the same damn drug as the sustained release form of Wellbutrin. The only issues will be with dosages. You can’t take as much Zyban as you can Wellbutrin.
More of Wellbutrin’s pros, cons, and interesting stuff

6.  Wellbutrin’s (bupropion hydrochloride’s) side effects

6.1  Typical side effects

Agitation, anxiety, insomnia, weight loss (bupropion has undergone trials both as, and part of, a weight loss medication), headache, dry mouth, nausea, constipation, dizziness. Most of these are transitory, but the weight loss, agitation and insomnia tend to stick around.

6.2  Uncommon side effects

Strange body odor, sweating, nervousness and tremor. Basically Wellbutrin could make you look like the guilty party, so you better have a damn good alibi at all times in case some big, unsolved crime goes down. Also: seizures.

6.3  Freaky rare side effects

Change in hair color. They swore Lady Clairol wasn’t involved! There was also new hair, possibly in unusual places. Painful erections, unusual ejaculations, ballism, and outright impotence. Wellbutrin must be one of God’s little jokes when you combine those with its tendency to make you hornier.
More about Wellbutrin’s side effects

7.  What Wellbutrin (bupropion hydrochloride) is best known for

More about Wellbutrin’s black box warnings, noted traits & effects

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8.  Wellbutrin’s (bupropion hydrochloride’s) half-life & how long until Wellbutrin clears your system

Wellbutrin itself: 12–30 hours, each of its metabolites:15–25, 23–43 and 24–50 hours. Clearance: 4–8 days.
Drugs.com’s drug-drug and drug-food interaction checker
More about Wellbutrin’s pharmacokinetics & noted drug-drug & drug-food interactions

9.  How Wellbutrin (bupropion hydrochloride) works (the best current guess at any rate).

Wellbutrin is a norepinephrine and dopamine reuptake inhibitor.
More about how Wellbutrin works. AKA Wellbutrin’s mechanism/method of action, or pharmacodynamics.

10.  Comments

More comments As if I didn’t go on long enough here.
Consumer/patient comments about & experiences with Wellbutrin

11.  Discussion board, PI sheet and other allegedly useful links

Crazy Meds’ Wellbutrin discussion board
Wellbutrin’s Full US Prescribing Information / PI Sheet
Allegedly Useful Links. Mostly any official sites we could find for this med and PI sheets from countries other than the US.

Wellbutrin Index | Brand and Generic Availability ›
Crazy Meds Comprehensive Wellbutrin pages

Bibliography

Date created 31 Dec 1969 - 17:00 Page Creator: JerodPoore Last edited by:

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Wellbutrin Basic Overview by JerodPoore is copyright 1969

Page design and explanatory material copyright © 2004 - 2012 Jerod Poore. All rights reserved.

Almost all of the material on this site is copyright © 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 Jerod Poore. Except, of course, the PI sheets - those are the property of the drug companies who developed the drugs the sheets are about - and any documents that are written by other people which may be posted to this site will remain the property of the original authors. You cannot reproduce this page or any other material on this site outside of the boundaries of fair use copying without the express permission of the copyright holder. That’s usually me, so just ask first. That means if want to print out a few pages to take to your doctor, therapist, counselor, support group, non-understanding family members or something like that - then that’s OK to just do. Go for it! Please. As long as you include this copyright notice and the following disclaimer, I’m usually cool with it.

All rights reserved. No warranty is expressed or implied in this information. Consult one or more doctors and/or pharmacists before taking, or changing how you take any neurological and/or psychiatric medication. Your mileage may vary. What happened to us won’t necessarily happen to you.
The information on Crazy Meds pertains to and is intended for adults. While some information about children and adolescents is occasionally presented (e.g. US FDA approvals), pediatric-specific data such as dosages, side effects, off-label applications, etc. are rarely included in the articles on drugs or discussed on the forum. If you are looking for information regarding meds for children you’ll have to go somewhere else.
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Very little information about visitors to this site is collected or saved. From time to time I look at search terms used and which pages they bring up in an effort to make the information I present more relevant. And the country of origin, just because I’m geeky like that. That’s about it. Depending on how you feel about Schrodinger, our privacy policy should either assuage or exacerbate your paranoia.
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Crazy Meds is optimized for the browser you’re not using on the platform you wish you had. Between you and me, it all looks a lot cleaner using Firefox or Safari, which is what a plurality of visitors use. And I’m running Windows XP3. On a computer that sits on top of my desk. With a 23 inch monitor. Hey, at least you can make the text larger or smaller by clicking on the + or - buttons in the upper right hand corner. If you have Java enabled. Like 99% of the websites on the planet, Crazy Meds is hosted on domain running an open source operating system with a variety of open source applications, including the software used to display what you’ve been reading. As such Crazy Meds is not responsible for whatever weird shit your browser does or does not do when you read this site².
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¹ While there are plenty of books to help you with hypochondria, for some reason there’s not much in the way of websites. Then again, staying off of the Internet is a large part of curing/managing the disorder.

² Have I mentioned how open source operating systems for commercial applications is one of the dumbest ideas in the history of dumb ideas?
[begin rant] I rent a dedicated server for Crazy Meds. It’s sitting on a rack somewhere in Southern California along with a bunch of other servers that other people have rented. The hardware is identical, but no two machines have exactly the same operating systems. I don’t even need to see what is on any of the others to know this. If somebody got their server at the exact same time, with the exact same features as I did, I’m confident that there would be noticeable differences in some aspects of the operating systems. So what does this mean? For one thing it means that no two computers in the same office of a single company have the same operating system, and the techs can spend hours figuring out what the fuck the problem could be based on that alone. It also means that application software like IP board that runs the forum here has to have so many fucking user-configurable bells and whistles that even when I read the manual I can’t find every setting, or every location that every flag needs to be set in order for a feature to run the way I want it to run. And in the real world it means you can get an MBA not only with an emphasis on resource planning, but with an emphasis on using SAP - a piece of software so complex there are now college programs on how to use it. You might think, “But don’t people learn how to use Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator in college?” Sure, in order to create stuff. And in a way you’re creating stuff with SAP. But do you get a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with an emphasis on Photoshop?
Back in the Big Iron Age the operating systems were proprietary, and every computer that took up an entire room with a raised floor and HVAC system, and had less storage and processing power than an iPhone, had the same operating system as every other one, give or take a release level. But when a company bought application software like SAP, they also got the source code, which was usually documented and written in a way to make it easy to modify the hell out of it. Why? Because accounting principles may be the same the world over, and tax laws the same across each country and state, but no two companies have the same format for their reports, invoices, purchase orders and so forth. Standards existed and were universally ignored. If something went wrong it went wrong the same way for everyone, and was easy to track down. People didn’t need to take a college course to learn how to use a piece of software.
I’m not against the open source concept entirely. Back then all the programmers read the same magazines, so we all had the same homebrew utilities. We even had the forerunner to QR Code to scan the longer source code. Software vendors and computer manufacturers sponsored conventions so we could, among other things, swap recipes for such add-ons and utilities. While those things would make our lives easier, they had nothing to do with critical functions of the operating system. Unless badly implemented they would rarely cause key application software to crash and burn. Whereas today, with open source everything, who the hell knows what could be responsible some part of a system failing. [/end rant]