TAKE YOUR MEDS FOLKS
this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2025
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Mental Health
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No u!!!
I got the guts to start asking a provider if I could try meds back in March. This is my second one I'm trying and idk if any of these are really ever doing anything or what I should be noticing. I can never tell. They seem like they do nothing.
What do you take?
I take lithium for bipolar. It's the first actually effective medication I've ever taken, it took literally 12 years for me to be correctly diagnosed and then assigned an appropriate medicaiton.
Wow. I don't think I have 12 years of concerted effort to go through. I'm glad you finally figured it out after all those years tho. Sucks you weren't able to figure it out sooner.
I was "diagnosed" with the vague/classic combo of just "anxiety and depression", but was 100% ruled out as being bipolar.
Tried Lexapro for a bit but I was still having some major emotional issues so I discontinued it. Had a major outburst upon first decreasing it which sucked major balls and will have possibly cost me my job. Dunno if that was withdrawals, if it meant that the drug was helping me somehow, or if it was totally unrelated.
My provider has now been trying me on lamotrigine for emotional dysregulation in combo with therapy. But I mean the evidence for that working out is pretty poor. Took several months but I finally reached my "target dose" 2 weeks ago. I don't know that it does anything for me either idk.
Yeah I've heard that definitely-depression-and-anxiety-and-not-anything-else song and dance myself. For years. I don't present as the typical bipolar patient, my moodswings are irregular, and my mania is more like hypomania. Getting doctors to understand something other than the idealized stereotypical clinical model is like pulling teeth while wearing grippy socks, in my experience.
I recently discovered lithium carbonate is available over the counter. My dose started at 1050 mg at twice per day; 600 in the morning, 450 at night. I know within the same day that it is having a positive effect, even if I haven't taken it for a while, especially if I take the entire day's dose at once.
It's a salt, so I shouldn't mix it in a glass of water if I'm taking the powder instead of a capsule, but instead sandwich the powder between two layers of applesauce, yogurt, or similar consistency foodstuff, and swallow whole. Contraindications for kidney, heart, and thyroid disease. Potential danger of developing kidney disease after years of consistent usage, further study ongoing. Regular kidney function tests and lithium serum concentration tests required.
All that said, I AM NOT A DOCTOR, AND SELF-MEDICATION IS POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS. I was forced to resort to self-medication as an extreme desperation measure against the collapse of the VA medical system, but that's a whole other thing. I'm swallowing a gram of lithium powder in applesauce these days and it just fucking works. If I'm you, and I still haven't found a medicine that has any noticeable effect (and since it's supposed to affect your cognition and emotional balance, the lack of noticeable effect just means plainly, lack of effect), I'm going to my doctor and insisting we try some new ideas. Lithium saved my life, and I wasted a lot of time wating for so-called experts to tell me what was going on in my head when I was the one feeling the shit.
Wow wtf I had no idea it was available over the counter!!
I think part of the reason it's difficult to tell if psych meds are "working" is NOT necessarily because they aren't working at all. They have a slow and insidious onset that is often not really immediately noticeable to the user.
But like I have a friend with schizophrenia. Occasionally she feels like she is totally "better" so she stops taking the meds. Well...you can imagine what happens next...
The difference is subtle to her, but significant over time that we all notice from the outside. So idk.
My particular issue is mostly extreme negative responses to certain triggers to the point where I want to self harm or even go further than that. It has threatened my job. My ups can be super high and fun but my lows are incredibly extreme...more extreme than others seem to have. But I don't come anywhere close to bipolar symptoms.
It's just like...I seem to just generally feel things (particularly negative things) much more intensely than others for some reason. And that really isn't any sort of diagnosis or disorder itself.
But I don’t come anywhere close to bipolar symptoms.
I was told that for, I cannot stress this enough, years. And that statement seems to be directly contradicted by the previous sentence, "My ups can be super high and fun but my lows are incredibly extreme…more extreme than others seem to have." Now, I can't diagnose you (especially by text over the internet), but I can say if your meds don't seem to be working and none of them seem to have worked in the past, it's time for a second opinion on the diagnosis. Ideally by a specialist with plenty of experience, who is not biased by previous specialists' impressions.
Also it's not strictly "over the counter," that was incorrect on my part. It's the exact same stuff as what is in my capsules, it's just 99.9% lab-grade purity, instead of 99.999% medicinal-grade purity. The link was to a science/chemical supply, not a pharmacy.
I wish I had any to begin with.
Are you okay?