Posted by Todd on June 14, 2000, at 19:56:37
In reply to Lithium success stories - Are there any?, posted by SLS on June 14, 2000, at 12:30:43
OK, SLS, here's your first success story. I had my first (and only) full-blown manic episode over 10 years ago. I was hospitalized and put on lithium. Since then, I have had one small period of hypomania. Outside of that, my life has been quite normal aside from the occasional flirting with hypomania. The one time I did experience a hypomania was directly attributable to increased stress and a reduced dosage of lithium. An increase in lithium dose along with a few days of risperdal and some R&R was all it took to stabilize me. Am I lucky? Does the lithium really work? Or is it just the "idea" that lithium works that keeps me stabilized?
These are questions I ponder all the time. Perhaps 2 years after I started lithium, my prescription ran out and I was unable to refill it for about 10 days. I thought, hey, I'll be fine. But 4 or 5 days in, I started getting panic attacks. I had never experienced these before in my life. It was quite frightening. But looking back on it, my subconscious may likely have been freaking out because there was no longer a safety net. What if I get manic again? What will my life be like? Oh, my God, I can't handle this! After 5 more days of this, my prescription got refilled and the panic attacks started to fade away.
The placebo effect is very intriguing. Because we think something is helping us, it actually may be helping us, regardless of the actual "chemical" imbalance that the medication is "correcting." Perhaps we think of our meds as being the safety net, the support we need and crave in our lives. We may actually be doing this "all ourselves" and our meds are just there to "watch out for us." If the meds are stopped, we lose the safety net and feel isolated and inadequate again, and the symptoms recur. These are just thoughtful meanderings, and would never prompt me to cease my lithium use - at least not in the near future, anyway. But what if lithium was more placebo than anything else? Wow, what a concept.
poster:Todd
thread:36179
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000610/msgs/37318.html