Posted by Squiggles on November 29, 2006, at 14:45:15
Well, i'm pretty well stabilized 100% from
the lithium fluctuation. It is always a
terrible, and time-consuming ordeal. But
with patience i finally reach the normality
plateau.What interests me about this, is that lithium
being an old drug, a lot is said about how
you never get back to normal if you get off,
or you become so depressed you commit suicide,
or lithium in particular has such a narrow
therapeutic index that it is really out of
favour in the drug armamentorium (who applied
this word to psychiatry? must have been the
military, lol);I don't believe any of that stuff;
First of all, you *do* get back to normal
after getting off lithium, but it is very
painful, for me at least. Someone like Dr.
Sheldon Preskorn probably knows why.Second, you do fall into the original illness
for which the drug was given (e.g. manic-depression) and you can kill yourself.
But that is the case with just about any
psychiatric drug. Infact, it's possible to fall into a pre-therapeutic state, without ever having had an illness, if you take drugs. So, it's
probably a change in the brain's chemical state and has not a particular relevance to this say
lithium versus Prozac.And finally, all psychiatric drugs have a therapeutic index. That has got to be a tautology. And I am not so sure that lithium's
narrow therapeutic index has actually been measured against the therapeutic index of the newer antidepressants. There is a lot of mythology that grows in the development of the history of psychopharmacology and taken at face value, without any evidence.Squiggles
poster:Squiggles
thread:708634
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20061129/msgs/708634.html