lithium

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

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

If you want to know a little more about Lithium, please see the link below 👇🏼

Living with Bipolar Disorder: Lithium

#BipolarDisorder #LithiumTherapy ##PsychiatricMedication

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