Limits Of Lithium
 

Limits Of Lithium

An article from Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), describes the two types of bipolar disorders, plus the limitations and dangers of the nine drugs used to treat them. Lithium being one of those nine.

They gave me lithium first time I was trying to come off alcohol.
I don't know if it really made a difference.
All I know is that I'm in a far more buggered up state these days and they haven't offered it.

My friend is on lithium for her bipolar. It really helps.

A strange place to be finding state-of-the-art info on bi-polar disorders.

I know some cars look like they are going backwards,
but I thought that was just the engineering for wind dynamics.
Maybe chrome would be better than lithium.

have you tried Buproprion? (Wellbutrin)

i have

225 mg Venlafaxine/day (Effexor)
150 mg Buproprion/twice a day (Wellbutrin)
10 mg lisinopril/day (blood pressure)
1 mg Lorazapam (Ativan) as needed up to 3 x day.

Dropped the hormones. Too expensive. Insurance charged me 50 bucks/mo and pay out of pocket was 40/mo. How does that makes sense?

So my severe perimenopausal symptoms try to steal relief from the medications intended for other purposes. It doesn't work so hot.

And still, not out of the woods.

I read in Darkness Visible (Styron) that there are trends to treat unipolar depression with Lithium. No. They offered. Lithium scares me much more so than the SSRIs. I don't want to be a complete zombie.

Yeah and Darkenss Visible must be at least 20 years old. 33, I just checked.

I am convinced a lot of depression is caused not only by chemical imbalances in our brains, but also the fact that things are really fucked up and we feel (rightly or wrongly) there's not much we can do about it.

I don't get to choose, because I only pay £8-ish (just under, can't remember, keeps going up) on prescription.

But no, nothing offered this time.
Last time I was suicidal.
This time I'm just dying.

My friend on lithium isnt zombie like at all. In fact, after she got over the ect and used to lithium, shes the best shes ever been.

She was pretty chronic before though.

You can't go to your doc and say, "Hey, my friend has had brilliant success with (x) and I'd like to give it whirl around the park?"

I thought this was an interesting talk about meds that we take for "chemical imbalances" in the brain.

All of these meds are two-edged swords. Two of my kids needed meds at certain points in their lives, and I think they were life-savers. At the same time I read journal articles about how some of the meds may 'prune' axons and change neural pathways, and it makes me feel sick. At the moment I'm on a medication for chemo side-effects that is giving me, as a side-effect of its own, more mental clarity than I've had for months. I'm grateful.

Many times these meds save lives, but like everything else they come with a cost.

Send me your leftovers.

and Axons make the heart grow fonder.

It's not just the psych meds, either. There have been studies showing that certain antibiotics affect dendrite growth as well.

Heck, there is strong anecdotal evidence that Tamiflu (influenza medicine) messes with your brain.