Oh my God I’m extremely manic for the last month! I’ve spent $1300!!! I’m broke! But I don’t have to pay rent next month so that’s great! Ive slept a max of 3 hours per night, and some not at all! Right now I’m going on 72 hours no sleep!
My psych suggested I need to go back on zyprexa and up my lamictal. Does zyprexa help with mania? I see her next week. I hate sleeping pills I don’t want to take them. I fractured a vertebrae in my lower back so I have some pain killers and flexeril which have calmed me some. I have worn out the carpet between my television and chair from pacing back and forth for hours. Its 4:30 am now and if it wasn’t dark I would mow my lawn and maybe run a marathon (well maybe not that). Okay I’ll stop now!
I found lithium to be good for mania. Its the best mood stabilizer and the most prescribed.
It calmes me and makes me able to sleep.
There’s a supplement called Lithium Orotate which is stronger lithium so you take a smaller dose to avoid kidney damage. It doesn’t help with SZ though so I stopped taking it.
The problem with lithium is if you have the gene mutation it does bad things to your blood. I hadn’t had the Genesight test yet but back.in 2010 my GP who took over my meds did a lab test and my metabolism of the drug into my blood woulda been very bad at lowest dose. So she saved me a good emergency for sure. After I got Genesight done and we saw the 3 mutations I have, it explains a lot of why meds don’t work on me.
But I think a lot of places don’t use lithium anymore, I know where I go now they don’t like to RX it, especially since bloodwork is required weekly for it.
That’s why I used the more potent lithium orotate, it has less side effects. My dr said don’t take more than what’s on the bottle, he was cool with it.
Valium helps me when i need to sleep and i have to put my mania to an end. I wake up crapshit but i am normal again. I use valium for emergencies as you described.
I don’t know, I just know they did the test with my blood with lithium. It’s a pill. Since the blood test was bad I never took it so I’m sorry I don’t know.
But might be something to ask about if you’re worried. A girl I dated in middle school was on lithium and she had bloodwork every week for the years she was on it. Then she tried to OD on it and ended up spending 9th grade in Mendota. She ended up with bad liver damage from the OD too, and last time I talked to her was on Facebook about 8 years ago. She took her young daughter and hasn’t been seen in 7 years.
Its because at therapeutic doses and above lithium carbonate can sometimes (rarely?) damage the kidneys. My dr said it was ok to take lithium orotate as its safer than lithium carbonate for the kidneys.
Lithium orotate penetrates the brain-blood barrier more and therefore you need a lower dosage than lithium carbonate.