To be honest, I was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder somewhere in my second or third year in college, which was somewhere between 2014 to 2015.
After everything that I went through despite having no recollection to most of them, I had to go to the college’s guidance counselors, in which they made me put into professional therapy. It was convoluted. At first, I felt as if the guidance counselors and therapists I was assigned to in the beginning never understood me. I went to a very incompetent woman’s clinic for both therapy and psychiatry. It was the worst time of my life.
Not only my therapist at that time was very incompetent and very apathetic about my personal life–as well as being insensitive about my transgendered friend’s death back in 2011–she kept talking over while I was still talking. She never listened to me during sessions. She even mentioned to me that she was “mentally challenged,” which brought me more red flags about her that I instantly thought that therapy was a waste of my time from my college studies.
After coping with this apathetic therapist… everything suddenly went black to me.
That was when I experienced my first manic episode.
That was also the very first time I was required to seek psychiatric help.
So, I (reluctantly) made an appointment to see the psychiatrist from the same clinic.
That was when I first found out that I’m bipolar. Although, despite what my psychiatrist said about my mental health condition, I have been in deep denial about my own bipolar disorder diagnosis.
That was also the first time I was prescribed to a certain medication to help me treat my condition.
That medication?
Lithium.
The first time I took a dose of lithium… I felt nothing.
I was deeply numb, inside and out.
I figured that since that was the first time I took lithium, it was either just a side effect or that the medication was still in the works.
I didn’t know what to make of this medication, to be honest. I literally felt nothing!
So, on the next day of my first dose, I took another dose.
Then, the third on the following day.
Finally, about a week later…
Something drastically altered.
First off, I just want to say that lithium was seriously the worst type of medication from the very beginning. It tasted like battery acid even though I don’t know what battery acid tastes like. It was very metallic and bitter, it made me sick. Still, I was required to keep taking lithium as per mandatory request by my psychiatrist. I reluctantly did so.
Second, lithium gave me serious side effects.
From what I recalled, side effects were dehydration and extreme thirst, in which I had to go to the bathroom every hour or two throughout the day; body tremors, whereas I mistook for a truck passing by and shaking the building; metallic aftertaste, causing me to lose my appetite; and, worst of all, nausea, in which I had to skip class on certain days to stay in bed.
Lithium made me want to fucking throw up.
That’s not all.
After about a month of taking lithium, I still suffered from blackouts caused by my mania, whereas people in my college kept telling me that I was eating cigarette ashes from the college’s smoking lot or screaming my lungs out at other people as well as violently pushing them away from me… or worse, threatening that I want to “end it.”
I absolutely have no fucking recollection of any of these!
That was when I realized that lithium is a bipolar lie.
Lithium did not treat my bipolar disorder! It made my bipolar disorder worst! It got even worse when having therapy sessions with my therapist that time became even more apathetic and that psychiatry sessions with my psychiatrist suddenly developed more coercion that I decided to not continue my sessions with that so-called clinic.
I did the unthinkable and stopped taking lithium cold-turkey. It was a huge mistake because I suffered severe withdrawals. The withdrawal symptoms were similar to the side effects of taking lithium except the body tremors got even more acute that it worsened my insomnia, in which I struggled academically in my college courses.
I honestly regret stopping lithium without the doctor’s orders, though I had to because lithium was actually making me worse. Ever since then, I stopped going to that clinic; I left my therapist in the middle of the session and never looked back at her, the psychiatrist, and the entire clinic.
I resumed my daily college life. Shit got even worse when the severity of my bipolar disorder got the best of me that I’d rather not explain publicly for a personal reason.
As I looked back to my personal experiences with taking lithium for my mental health condition, I realized that…
Lithium is a lie!
To me, lithium never treated my bipolar disorder; it only worsens.
Henceforth, lithium is a bipolar lie, according to myself.
I never want to take that medication again.
Even though I’ve had a myriad of terrible experiences with that clinic, that therapist, and that psychiatrist, I have found a more suitable clinic with more competent therapists and psychiatrists. I had to resume seeking help for my condition if I do not want to “go back there” again.
Fortunately, I did found the right therapists and the right psychiatrists from that clinic. I’m currently prescribed to the right kind of medications; for my bipolar disorder, I got prescribed with Risperdal, whereas it became more beneficial for my mental health condition. Every day since that very beginning of that time I stepped into that right clinic, I got better every day.
I now take my rightful medications daily, which is doctor’s orders. I never stopped or missed a dose. I improved myself with what I need to take, as well as doing what I love to do the most. I do my daily self-care activities and doing what I do the best. It’s better that way.
I came into realization that lithium is and never was the right treatment for bipolar disorder, at least, only to myself. Lithium has been a lie all along.
If I could change something for a better world, I’d ban lithium as a prescriptive medication for bipolar disorder.
According to my personal opinion, lithium is meant for batteries, not for human ingestion as a mental health treatment. It is that extremely toxic for humans.
Therefore, lithium is a bipolar lie and it will always be.