Posted by Roslynn on February 29, 2012, at 15:29:42
In reply to Re: Scary lithium questions PLS answer » Roslynn, posted by SLS on February 29, 2012, at 14:25:27
Hi Scott,
Thank you so much for your reply.
My lithium dosage was adjusted from 600mg to 300mg at my request because I feel that my meds are interfering whenever I try to increase my anafranil (the only med that has worked for me in 4 yrs.)
I have depression...at 600mg my blood levels are usually about .7, although I don't believe the medication is helping me in the first place.
I guess my fear is that the lithium could be doing *something* to help, something that I am not aware of, and so i will start to feel worse while weaning off Li.
However, like you said I am not going off the med entirely and I could just increase the dose again.
Question: If I start to feel bad, how do I know it's due to less lithium in my system or if it's some kind of rebound effect? Weird question, i know.
Why does it take so long to know how a drug discontinuation will effect you?
Thank you,
Roslynn> > Hi everyone, my lithium dose was adjusted downward
>
> Why?
>
> Depression or mania?
>
> What is your current blood level?
>
> If someone is to relapse, it can take up to 4 months after drug discontinuation for this to happen. It is possible that you wouldn't know how a dosage reduction would affect you for several weeks. It has nothing to do with lithium still being in your body. The lithium leaves the body very quickly.
>
> There has been some debate about this, but there might be a danger of lithium not working again if you need to restart it after a period of discontinuation. However, I don't know how often this occurs. We do see this happen fairly often with the SSRIs, so this is not an untenable theory. I have a friend to whom this happened with lithium.
>
> http://www.dr-bob.org/tips/split/Starting-and-stopping-lith.html
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> You are not discontinuing lithium entirely at this point, so I have a feeling that even if you did begin to deteriorate, you would recover very quickly once you increased the dosage again.
>
>
> - Scott
poster:Roslynn
thread:1012012
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20120221/msgs/1012028.html