Bollockybollockybollocky HTT

[EnpoTree]

Basically I have to take bloody diazepam three times a day and be visited by HTT every day and even then the nurse reckons it's 50/50 if I'll need to go into hospital or not. This has gone too far. I'm absobloodylutely sodding fine and visited the drop-in as I was worried I was going to become not-fine and wanted to know how to stop DP worrying unnecessarily after having spoken to CMHT as I was referred from GP as I wanted to avoid becoming depressed and how to maintain my current good humour and general sparkling and effervescent nature. The lesson apparently being that being responsible and proactive with your mental health gets you accused of poor insight and told to take drugs on pain of hospital admission.

She's really fucking scared me. I will not go into hospital. So to avoid it I have to swallow pills that make me slow and stupid and sleepy even though I am totally happy with the way I am now and it's everyone else who doesn't like it. Maybe its everyone else who needs bloody medicating.

I hate this so much. I know its a bad idea to get involved in MH services. So why do I ever go back?

I'm interested in your conception of lithium though, why you thought it would inhibit a stimulant (when it is of course the ultimate antidepressant and often used to boost the antidepressant actions of other drugs). It sounds like you've filed it, mentally, in the same sort of category as drugs like olanzapine when it's a pretty unique and magical substance. Salt of the earth, if you like!

Prozac was the first psychiatric drug I was ever given. I was a bit depressed, working too hard at my hotbed of mental illness very academic girls' school, dropping behind on homework and staying up all night to do it, and with a slight painkiller habit for my chronic headaches, and was conned into seeing a GP by being told it was for headaches when actually they'd been primed to ask about depression. Sent me to see a "lovely" child psychiatrist, the rest of whose patients seemed to be little kids with ADHD, who put me on Prozac. And I went completely mental - agitated, paranoid, hearing things. So they switched me to paroxetine. That was what made me start self-harming and attempting suicide. Antidepressants do bad things to me but far from not being allowed them, I was made to take them!

I don't know anything about lithium at all, or what it does. I know it kills people.

I've just been googling Tooting Bec in the 1960s and came up with this book excerpt - terrifying stuff! Nothing to do with anti-psych drugs, but an early addiction doctor talking about how they used to treat heroin addicts - with pure heroin, on demand - interesting stuff! I'm actually quite intrigued to buy the book, even though it would only be for interest.

Lithium in extreme overdose kills people. When properly managed it's life changing. Or at least it is for me.

how horrible

I guess our knowledge has moved on since then, someone said on another thread recently ANTIDEPRESSANTS SAVE LIVES but they don't, except possibly some men over 65, we don't have evidence for that claim yet

we do know there is an association between them and increased suicidal ideation in young people though

To be fair heroin is an excellent treatment for heroin addiction.

Perhaps not on demand...

I was not entirely accurate when I said antidepressants do bad things to me. Phenelzine was lovely. All the others were shit.

Oops, sorry for xposting!
I know that fluoxetine can have terrible side effects - I wonder if anyone has actually researched why it can cause such problems in some people and not others?

I'm sure lithium is helpful for some people.

actually lithium is the ONLY treatment known to save lives (of psych type I mean)

and clozapine for a specific group

so it's bizarre to read that it kills people, an acute overdose on top of chronic toxicity can be lethal but lithium has the best and very firmly established anti-suicidal properties

and no price gouging goes on with it, it's not a big pharma thing, just sound evidence

I can't see any of the book excerpt - it says I've reached my limit

Seriously, my school was so nutsogenic. Half my schoolfriends self-harmed to handle the stress. My Facebook feed is a stream of MH and ED awareness posts.

I think we had similar schooling Enpo. I went to an all girls boarding school and it was a hotbed of eating disorders and self harm. What is it about all girl schools?

Evangelistic lithium users freak me out a bit. They sound like benzo addicts when they talk about temazepam with a look of wistful love in their eyes, or chronic cannabis users talking about what a wonderful natural herb it is and how the world would be a better place if only the world leaders would sit together and share a spliff.

I don't think you could design a better system for inducing mental disorders than the British girls' school. Odd, isn't it?

I have an extremely ambivalent personal relationship with lithium, just sharing the indisputable facts.

Yeah I avoided the boarding school experience thankfully, partly because my mum had such a bad experience with it not that my parents could have afforded it

Thanks Mitch - I didn't mean you, though i see how it could've come across like that. It's more my experience of shaky, sweaty, people telling me how wonderful lithium is, and telling me it couldn't possibly be what killed my grandmother, that I'm thinking of.

It's one of the first things psychs try if they think you are a candidate for it, am sure you would have been started on it in hospital earlier if it was indicated. It's not that I think you should try it but anyone reading might be interested to know the facts! I also have to remind myself perpetually of its benefits because it's easy to forget

But I do know how well it works for mania. If I had mania I would want to be given it. Well, I probably wouldn't want it at the time, but you know what I mean.

did your grandmother die of lithium toxicity? Am sorry

I don't know if it is that great for mania, there's usually additional stuff to take for that? But that's just my experience.

WHY DOES THIS BASTARD IPOD KEEP CRASHING ON MN ON THE NEW IOS AND THEOWING AWAY MY POSTS FUCKDAMMITARSESHITBOLLOCK

She died because it fucked with her kidneys long term and built up too high short term, then she wasn't taken to a real hospital when she was dying as they thought she was just mad again. She should've lived to her nineties and I should've got to meet her.

Someone upthread though said that they wished their grandmother had been treated and they never got to meet their grandmother either, presumably because she was killed by mental illness. I can't remember who though. I would scroll up and look but THIS BASTARD IPOD HATES ME

I went to an all girls' school as well. Yeah. I'd say it was pretty fucked up.