I want to write this post as gently as I can. While I was here, I was embraced by my sz family. I was able to make sense of my schizoaffective diagnosis and start to deal with my delusions. You guys are amazing.
I got new doctors who suggested new approaches and new treatments. As a result, I was removed from all my psych meds, including Lithium. The plan was to take me off everything, keep a close eye on me, test me for everything under the sun, and then medicate for whatever was actually wrong with me, not just a med side effect. The assumption was that without meds I would end up crazier than a pig in… well, anyway.
Nobody could have guessed what would happen when I went off meds. My negative “schizo” symptoms disappeared. My extrapyramidal symptoms disappeared I could walk easily, write by hand, walk down stairs. My mind cleared. I’m still cranky, depressed, quick to anger, stubborn and aggressive. But I am not psychotic.
So yeah, I’m not one of you the way I was for awhile. I will never, ever say that Lithium isn’t a great drug. It probably saved my life. But a couple of doctors getting confused about who was keeping track of what allowed this great drug to get to a toxic level in my blood and I could have died.
I am opening this thread to answer questions about Lithium and my years of experience on it. Like I said, it can be good or bad, it’s just important to keep an eye on it.
I love you all an I’m sorry if this is at all inappropriate.
Nah, friend. I’m not encouraging anyone to go off their meds without close medical supervision. In my case, the number of drugs I was taking was obviously part of the problem, so the choice was either to take away one at a time and see what happened, or take them all away at once. This way, I can have a full course of psychiatric tests done while totally unmedicated to see which problems are really me and which ones were being caused by the meds.
I’ve already relapsed a bit, but nothing too out of control. Like I mentioned, I’m moody, cranky, even more opinionated than usual and I have a short fuse. On the plus side, my writing has been taking off and I’ve even started playing the piano again!
My neg sz symptoms, mostly avolition, anhedonia, brain fog, difficulty concentrating and cognitive deficit probably went from a 6 to a 1-2 (3 for avolition- that’s still hard.) My neurological symptoms like tremor, loss of balance, tinnitus and “alice in wonderland” syndrome dropped overnight from 7 to 1 after three days off meds.
I’ve been off meds about two weeks now.
Again, I’m not anti-meds. I’ll surely end up back on something at some point. I’m not even anti-lithium! That drug did great things for me for years. There was just a big miscommunication about who was supposed to be monitoring my blood levels and they slowly got too high.
great story of recovery but very rare, mostly what happens when we as schizophrenia sufferers go off medication we fall back into psychosis and that is the norm, i wish it wasnt the case, wish everything was ok but it isnt, but i am very happy for you, i heard lithium can affect the liver or kidneys quite bad in high doses
i wonder if all the meds are out of your system yet, i think you should talk to your doc about
this could quickly become a problem if left untreated, sometimes a brief spell of normality is followed by a shitstorm of symptoms, catch it early is what i say, if there is any hint it may be coming back then talk to your doc straight away
Lithium, thankfully, clears the body very quickly. About 5 days, tops. The other ADs I was on might have stuck around as long as ten days, but absolutely no longer. These numbers are based on how long it takes a persons’ organs to clear the substances and their metabolites. My doctors and I agree with the established medical literature about how fast drugs leave the body.
(I say this because some people believe in withdrawal syndromes that last weeks, months or years after stopping a medication, but unless that med caused you permanent structural damage (like a tylenol overdose damaging your liver), there is little or no scientific evidence that these “syndromes” are really a result of the medication they are blamed on and not something else entirely.)
I’m definitely under a microscope right now in terms of behavior and mood. I still see my therapist once a week and my pdoc at least monthly- more often if I need to. Nobody thinks I’m cured. The only miraculous thing that happened is that what everyone thought was a rather sudden and late onset of severe negative sz symptoms turned out to be poisoning instead. Given my history I’ll almost definitely experience depressive episodes again, but my prognosis went from “very poor” to “not entirely awful”
Pending many many many many more tests, it looks like the next step will be a treatment approach based on Austim Spectrum Disorder as the primary diagnosis. This approach is really freeing to me because it focuses less on pathologizing and changing every single tiny behavior and feeling that is not normal, and more on embracing the fact that I think and see the world differently than most people and coming up with ways for me to make interactions with that world more comfortable without necessarily changing every thought in my head.
For encouraging ppl to go off their meds. Just you wait theyll come after you like a pack of bloodhounds​:dog2:
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for allowing you to do that.
And how bad were ur negative 
symptoms before you got off them on a scale of 1 to 10?
