Lithium - Anyone on it??

Thanks meluare, I know it's taken me a while to reply. It is interesting and I have read quite a bit of stuff on the internet. My psychiatrist says that the recommended level she'd like for me is between .6 - 1.0 mine was sitting around .8 - .9 was causing me severe nausea so we reduced it about 2 weeks ago and I know that in the appointment tomorrow it will be going up again as with the reducement there has been a big drop in my mood and hearing voices again and thoughts of self-harm which I hadn't had those for nearly a couple of months so shall see what happens tomorrow.

I haven't ever been on it but I believe it has really great results for people with Bi Polar once they get the level just right, apparently that can take a while to sort out.

Yea, they've added risperidone to the mix of meds now. So will see how that goes as well.

Hi Logical cents, good to hear from you. You mention your moods not as good, it is possible I have heard to get to much of a mood stabiliser and they then cause depression. How ever the voices arent to good so upping the stabiliser/antisycotic is reasonable. I dont know much about Risperidone.
Iam doing alright. I had trouble with resistence in the lithium and took my dose up to 1500mg as it lost effectiveness. I felt OK at that level but could feel I was on something, a bit sedated a bit something else. In order to get the dose down Doc gave me 25mg of seroquel. I dropped my dose of lithium to 1250mg and started the quetiapine. I have compulsions that the lithium was preventing when effective, they were still under control with the combo. Another thing Lithium does for me I discovered is it reduces my pulse rate. For decades my average resting pulse rate would be around mid 70s, on 1500mg it was low 60s on 1000mg it is in the high 60s. I am now taking 1000mg of lithium and the compulsion problem is low to moderate. I think I am getting resistent to the seroquel as it had a real pronounced effect on my sleep at first. Now I have some trouble falling asleep and dont feel so good waking in the mornings. I am going to start taking it earlier in the evenings. This resistent thing is bad, you think things are going well and then suddenly things go to pack.

I use to be on lithium tablets, the last prescription they gave me capsules. I find the capsules better, I had a problem that was fixed on the tablets but came back after a while. The capsules have sorted that problem out. Maybe I will get resistant after a while, hope not. Has any one out there an opinion on tablets vs capsules?