Lithium has helped me a great deal. My pdoc put me on one 100mg pill a day and I did fine with that... Then she increased it to two 100mg pills a day, and I ended up with lithium toxicity. She knocked it back down to one and I've did fine on it since then... Been taking it for quite sometime now, and was very frightened to take it for awhile after my lithium toxicity incident, but no problems have arose since then. I get my lithium level checked once every three months as well. I've noticed no signs of skin problems on it and no weight gain problems... Probably because I had decreased my sweet drinks and replaced them with water. One thing you need to be aware of is you don't need to change your salt intake... Increased salt intake can cause some problems from what I understand, so keep it level.