I know lithium helps lots of people but it makes me crazy how overprescribed it is.
Adderall is so hard to get but antipsychotics and mood stabilizers are doled out like candy. They’re dangerous drugs too and can have serious side effects that don’t necessarily go away immediately when you stop taking them.
I was in my early 20s struggling with normal early 20s drama and the years of stress kinda made my mental health a little spicy, but I wasn’t psychotic or delusional. I was depressed and chronically stressed out with no escape.
My psychiatrist prescribed me an antipsychotic anyway that gave me HORRIBLE side effects. Like one time I was in the middle of driving when suddenly the sun got really bright and blurry like I was looking at it through a camera with Vaseline smeared on the lens. Then my eyes and neck started jerking and twisting involuntarily. Thankfully someone else was with me so they could drive while I just curled into a ball and held myself hoping it would finally end. It went on for HOURS. It was scary af. I took the medication like one more time after that and although I didn’t have such a bad reaction as that one time, I felt… uncomfortable. Like full body discomfort. It felt like my bladder was really full or I had a UTI but all over my entire body.
I immediately stopped taking it. Then I found out through doing my own research (because why would the doctor who is incorrectly prescribing them tell me) these aren’t uncommon side effects and what I was experiencing the first time was called dystonia or an oculogyric crisis. It literally looked like I was possessed. There’s videos of it out there if you want to see. It’s fucked up.
The full body discomfort feeling is called akathisia and was probably just as bad simply for the fact I couldn’t focus on anything else.
Holy Christ, I didn’t know Ziprasidone was Geodon. It was prescribed to me for relatively severe panic attacks that were so bad I couldn’t leave the house. I chose to grit my teeth and raw dog it unmedicated because the thought of Geodon side effects would put me into a state of abject fear. Somehow I came through that nightmare okay but I do not wish to relive the summer of 2005.
I was taking Geodon and it caused me to completely black out. Luckily I was in my apartment, but I was taking my meds by my sink and I fell backwards on my kitchen floor. I woke up to my dog licking my face and it was also my first day of senior year in college (go figure). I didn’t know how long I was out and then I was freaked out because I wanted to make sure my dog didn’t get into the meds (she didn’t). It was crazy scary.
I had that too, it was f’n horrible. I tried to tell my psychiatrist, he thought I was exaggerating so I could get out of taking the medication.
Gotta love doping up teens in the group homes in the 80’s.
Mood stabilizers are sometimes used to modify antidepressants for treatment resistant depression (which is probably trauma in disguise and not “depression” at all but I digress). They’re also prescribed off label to manage mood dysregulation for conditions like PMDD and CPTSD.
It may be different in your country, but ADHD assessments here can be thousands of dollars, require visiting a separate provider than your prescribing psychiatrist, take hours, etc.
I’ve neither seen nor heard of any similar standard of rigor for bipolar or schizophrenia diagnoses. I understand that when someone is in mania or psychosis that’s different- but I used to be in a depresssion therapy group and almost all of us were on mood stabilizers and antipsychotics.
My psychiatrist also happily prescribed a mood stabilizer (lamotrigine- I won’t touch lithium again) for my CPTSD but will not give me the adderall I desperately need to function.
It surprises me lithium is used so frequently still. It really is just a hard drug to take. I can see if someone has a reaction to lamotrigine switching to lithium, but having it as the first med offered for a mood stabilizer is just cruel in my opinion.
Yup, it's used as a "all other med trials failed" medication, never ever the first resort. We still will have patients who do take it, they're usually around 3-4 days until they get transferred to one of the specialized psychiatric facilities or a hospital with a higher level of care (one hospital I worked at had wing of the psych unit that was entirely locked, it mostly held people in transition to our forensic institution)
111
u/kittenmittens4865 11h ago
I know lithium helps lots of people but it makes me crazy how overprescribed it is.
Adderall is so hard to get but antipsychotics and mood stabilizers are doled out like candy. They’re dangerous drugs too and can have serious side effects that don’t necessarily go away immediately when you stop taking them.