I'm starting lithium Thursday.

[Crawling]

I'm very scared of the side effects I'm gonna have. I really wanted to avoid lithium but psychiatrist has pushed this. I've had my blood taken now just waiting on the results.

I have no experience of lithium but your psychiatrist is the expert so I suppose you have to trust them.

If you are uncomfortable with the side effects you could tell them and ask to change again? Could you agree with your psych you will do a three month trial for example?

I've known two people on Lithium who've found it worked wonders. It's got the deepest evidence base of any psychiatric medication. Point to watch: your salt levels. You'll get hella thirsty at first and pee all your salt out while replacing it with pint after pint of water. They say 'keep your salt levels up' assuming that like everyone you have too much salt in your diet. The trick is to have a pint of squash with a teaspoon of salt in it if you're feeling really rotten: if that sorts you out the problem was salt levels rather than the lithium.

I find it very good medicine but side effects are not so nice. I got underactive thyroid because of lithium. I lost lots of hair because of it :/
But it is very good med :)

I've just started on it (well, third week), although for me it is the latest in a long run of meds, some of which worked for a while, some worked but had horrid side effects, and some didn't work at all.

Are you bipolar?

I've heard Lithium is very good for having hardly any side effects compared to the other options, and very good evidence - I've been asking to go on it for years but apparently I wasn't stable enough till now. Which is weird, but there you go.

I've been on lithium for 5 years, I have absolutely no side effects whatsoever. I am in the low end of healthy BMI range so no weight gain. It is, quite simply, a wonder drug. I was very very ill before starting it, stopped taking it for pregnant and breast feeding and became quickly manic (diagnosis bipolar 1) and very ill, sectioned in hospital with my baby. As soon as I restarted I became well again.

Thanks all I feel a lot better now. Hopefully I will have a good experience with lithium too.

Hope it goes well for you. My dh has been taking lithium for a couple of months now - he was a bit lethargic to start with (tho that's not unusual!!) - he doesn't feel any side effects at all. Too early to say how effective it is really but he's been very well so far.
I also have a good friend who is bipolar 1 who takes it and swears by it. Also no side effects.