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Medication Explained: Lithium Therapy 💊 #BipolarDisorder #lithium #Bipolar1Disorder #Bipolar2Disorder #BipolarDepression

Below is a link to a blog I wrote explaining some things about Lithium and my personal experiences. If you’re taking Lithium or have any interest in learning about it, please check the link out. Any questions you may have about it please feel free to leave them in the comments section below and I’ll try my best to answer them and get back to you 👍

Living with Bipolar Disorder: Lithium Therapy

#MentalHealth #MentalIllness #PsychiatricMedication

Living with Bipolar Disorder: Lithium Therapy

Medication Explained: Lithium Carbonate (Priadel) 💊 Background & Discovery Some 70 years ago, John Cade, an Australian psychiatrist, discovered a medication for bipolar disorder that helped man…
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My Opinions on Psyche Meds #BipolarDisorder #Medication #MentalHealth

Dr. Vohra (my psychiatrist), I think now we have hit the bullseye with regards to the meds. However, I’d like to give you some feedback and input about it from someone who has lived it. Firstly, it’s going to be an opinion with a heavily biased psychopharmacological perspective. I was prescribed Mirtazapine at the start of my treatment. It worked wonders. I’m not sure how it’s classified now as a NaSSa or a an atypical antidepressant. I know though that it works on Serotonin and Dopamine. I was prescribed Sertaline after a while, maybe because my doctor thought it had become ineffective. The sertraline is an SSRI and with my history of substance abuse, I can only compare it to ecstasy or MDMA. I experienced tingling and sensations in my jaw which caused it to shake. After a couple of weeks this subsided, but it’s from then it made me feel awful. I was prescribed Tramadol at the time for sciatica and I subsequently had three epileptic like seizures. I professed to the health professionals that cared for me that I was on the two drugs and I was maybe experiencing serotonin Syndrome. This fell on deaf ears. I have since come off both medications and had no repeat incidents of fits.

As a result of this, I was awaiting my appointment with the psychiatrist and my GP prescribed me Depakote. It’s an anticonvulsant as you know and it’s strength of dose targets the ailment. It’s around 500mg for migraines, 1000mg for epilepsy and 1,500-2,000mg for bipolar disorder. It’s also used for schizophrenia too. So you can surmise it is a potent drug. I attended my second appointment with my psychiatrist after commencing Depakote therapy and I wasn’t able to speak to the psychiatrist. I wasn’t able to even grunt or shrug my shoulders. Medicated to the point of anonymity.
With a mood stabiliser like Depakote and an antidepressant like Mirtazapine, it causes a monumental shift in mood for Bipolar sufferers that are exaggerated to the extreme boundaries ever experienced. You are calm one minute then you’re orbiting the moon the next. You are more spaced out than Neil Armstrong ever was. I don’t fully understand how it works, but you have a drug to stop you going too high, another drug to stop you going too low, then a further medication to hold everything in place. Some drugs work in tandem with others to achieve this.

For example, I was on Depakote as a mood stabiliser. I was also on Quetiapine as an antipsychotic. These two however have the potential to be detrimental to each other and effect how proficient each one is in treating your problems. I know it’s not up to me to pick and choose what I take but if I’m taking something then I want it to be the best possible medication I can have.
I now take Lithium (600mg), Olazapine (20mg) and Fluoxetine (20mg). Olazapine and Fluoxetine work well together. Olanzapine is an atypical antipsychotic, just like Quetiapine I was on previously. The dosage for Quetiapine ranges from 200-800mg, at the end of my relationship with Quetiapine I was on 750mg a day. The pharmacist at my local chemists pulled me to one side as I went to pick this up to double check it was right. They’d never administered a dosage like it before.

So I’m taking an SSRI, so it stops my serotonin being recycled and keeps it in the part of my brain to be effective. I’m not sure of why this is but I’m taking atypical antipsychotic which effects my serotonin and with Olazapine it blocks my dopamine too. I don’t think Quetiapine does this. Dopamine is the pleasure monoamine that causes reward pathways. Cocaine for example hits every major monoamine in the brain and stops their re uptake to cause an overload of brain chemistry. Crazy isn’t it?!?!
I feel disinterested in some activities that arise and my participation in my hobbies is wavering to say the least.
The one thing I can categorically say is that medication for mental illnesses might control the severity of the extremes a person goes through but it also stifles any expression a person has and you are bereft of any enthusiasm to be the person you are.
#MightyTogether #BipolarDepression #Depression #lithium

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Lithium therapy

I am wondering what peoples experience with lithium has been like. It has just reached therapeutic level (0.6) in my bloods. I have no side effects. None at all. No shakes, no nausea, diarrhoea, increased thirst or tiredness. In fact I feel quite alert and my sleep has greatly improved. However, my bloods have come back with an under active thyroid (since starting). What is peoples experience with lithium long term? I have taken almost every other medication imaginable. #lithium #Bipolar1 #BipolarDisorder #HypothyroidismUnderactiveThyroidDisease

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Lithium, your experience?

My psychiatrist just prescribed lithium without much discussion. After researching, one of the main problems is reacting with Venlafaxine. Hello that’s my main anti depression med. I find my psyc. kind of useless. How did it go for you? #lithium

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Lithium Carbonate, Semisodium Valproate, Quetiapine and Mirtazapine 💊 #BipolarDisorder #Medication

It’s a heavy arsenal of Psych Meds I have accumulated wouldn’t you say? But this is the thing that you have to accept. Bipolar Disorder is an absolute Tyrant that has to be silenced. I’m lucky to have found a balance now it seems. I had to persist with my psychiatrist and justify to him why I wanted to be prescribed Lithium as well as the other meds. I was functioning before the lithium was introduced. I wasn’t showing any cause for concern so to speak so my psychiatrist was happy with my condition. However, I knew something wasn’t quite right with me. So I spoke to the Psychiatric Pharmacist at Mountcroft and explained to her about how things were and my thoughts. I’d done my research and put together my notes to show what the problem was, my hypothesis on the next step and then my justification for it and my conclusion. I wasn’t telling anyone how to do their job, I was just giving them the best explanation of how I felt. The pharmacist concurred with my proposal so it went back to my psychiatrist and he authorised my prescription. I’m also on Ramipril so there’s concerns for that raising lithium levels in the blood and causing toxicity. However, as I was already on the ramipril, the introduction of lithium could be boosted by it meaning that I may only need a lower dose than usual to hit the therapeutic zone.

I makes you wonder though doesn’t it. Before the medication, before the psychiatric appointments, before the self harming, before the psychosis, before the mania, before the depression, when you are yourself and not labelled or diagnosed with this or that, you didn’t feel comfortable and felt that you weren’t like the other people around you. So you don’t know what to do. Social pressures and society can then push you further down the rabbit hole. After you break and go to the doctor, they don’t put you back together as you were. You are remodelled, your brain chemistry altered by drug after drug after drug to become someone that looks like you, but isn’t really you?!? #BipolarDisorder #lithium #Depakote #Quetiapine #Mirtazapine

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Why don't antidepressants and therapy work for me and my depression? Is it something else, C-PTSD or Autism?

I have lived all of my 64 years (that I can remember) being depressed. I didn't know what it was until my 20s, and read a book called REALITY THERAPY which described my symptoms very well, and offered me hope for the first time. I started therapy soon after, but living with depression ever since.

I have been in regular therapy since that time, and have had a wide variety of therapists, and a wide variety of antidepressants in those years. I'm currently on Effexor XR 300mg per day, and have been for over 10 years. It seems to have worked better for me than others I had in the previous years.

Still, the best that I ever feel is what I think 'normal' people feel when they say they're depressed. I call it "neutral", although when I'm questioned by a therapist or doctor, they classify it as 'depressed'. For me, that "neutral" state feels like a huge relief, and a time to freely exhale, and otherwise let my body loose, and to relax. But like I said, the doctors say that I am still depressed then, just not as much as I usually am.

Twenty years ago, a new doctor told me that the reason I wasn't getting better was because I was misdiagnosed, and he diagnosed me with Bipolar type 2. I started on Depakote as a mood stabilizer, and stayed on antidepressants as well. Then came a diagnosis of ADHD, and I have been on Ritalin ever since. I spent decades on the combination and still fought depression every step of the way.

Last year I was switched from Depakote to Lithium, at a high dose, and because doctors didn't check my blood levels each month, I ended up with severe Lithium toxicity, and near death. I was taken to a hospital with a Trauma Center a hundred miles away, and spent the next week there hooked to three IVs, and constant medical attention. I'm still recuperating at home.

My current psychiatrist doesn't agree with the previous Bipolar 2 diagnosis, but thinks it may be something else. C-PTSD seems to fit in a myriad of ways with me. But now I am wondering if even some level of Autism fits with me. It's hard for me to tell what might be actual symptoms that I have, and what might just be coincidences.

If my depression is not coming from 'depression', per sé, but is coming from C-PTSD or Autism, would that explain why the antidepressants and talk therapy over the years have never truly gotten rid of it? Or does it not make any difference, and I'm just whistling in some dark alley somewhere? I don't really have much hope any more that things can ever get any better. ♧


#TreatmentresistantDepression
#Depression #ChronicDepression #Bipolar2Disorder #ADHD #Effexor #lithiumtoxicity #lithium #Misdiagnosed #BipolarDisorder #neurodiverse #MajorDepressiveDisorder #Depression #SocialAnxiety #AdultDiagnosis #AutismDiagnosis #BipolarDisorderDiagnosis #Autism #UndiagnosedAutism #TheNationalAutisticSociety #AutismAcceptance #Anxiety #PTSD #CPTSD #PTSDSupportAndRecovery #ComplexPosttraumaticStressDisorder #Selfdiagnoses

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