I'm a 28 years old male, diagnosed as BPD when I was 18. Life's much more stable than it used to, I'm living by myself and have been holding a steady job for the last 9 years but I'm still not totally normal and I feel that it affects me especially with romantic relationships, but also at work where I think I could have a much better career if I wasn't so unstable. 

I've had CBT training (unfortunately I don't have DBT in my country), have mindfulness skills and more than a year of yoga classes, but I've been lazy in the past months. I still think about suicide constantly, have lots of mood swings that I can pretend to others that are not happening but wear me down for the rest of the day. It feels as if I'm an American and I have to use manual gears in my car, but this for driving my life; so I marked an appointment with a psychiatrist this Friday and am considering asking him for a prescription of Lamotrigine.

I tried plenty of other drugs with undesirable side effects:

* **Escitalopram** - Low libido, had to quit
* **Duloxetine** - Brain zaps after I quit, not going to that again
* **Benzodiazepines **- Too good, too addictive, work in the short term but isn't something for the long term. Also, memory loss
* **Pregabalin** - Prescribed for my insomnia, too good and I somehow felt it was even more addictive than benzos. I had to throw them off because I was eating and snorting them like candy
* **Bupropion** - Used it to try to quit smoking. The feeling wasn't nice
* **Valproate** - Wasn't prescribed, I just bought it. Took for a few weeks during a breakup and despite not knowing if it helped me becoming more stable, I know that it didn't change my consciousness in undesirable ways (memory loss, loss of control, euphoria) and I felt like my normal self under the effects, that's what I'm aiming for but the need for constant blood workups and the potential hair loss are making me stay away from it

Lamotrigine seems like a nice option and I read some good reviews (but also some terrible ones). I'm looking for something that levels up my moods a bit but that don't have many noticeable effects on my cognition. What do you think? Any recommendations?