[shockozulu]

I was on lithium for a year and a half. I was not bi-polar, but a teenager who had just lost her career in competative sports due to injury, had a mother who was abusing drugs and nearly killed me, and my grandmother (who raised me) had died--all in 6 months. This was before SSRIs, and nothing was working on my depression. It was lithium or MAOIs. Doc didn't want me on a MAOI because I already had an eating disorder. The last thing I needed to was to watch my food intake.

I had a lot of blood tests to make sure my level was safe, and a terrible metallic taste in my mouth, but it worked like no other. It kept me alive and away from abusing drugs while I was on it.

I was taken off of it when a level III clinical trial for a new drug, called Prozac, came out. We decided to try that and it worked.