I don't really remember a lot about the time I was taking Lithium. I was first given Paxil, which gave me a wierd feeling in my thoaght and I couldn't stop swallowing, so I had to stop taking it. After that I was on Zoloft, and I remember feeling like a zombie. Riding the bus to school and being unable to unstick my mouth every morning, it was so dry. The last thing I was put on was Lithium when my pdoc started talking about bipolar, but I don't remember much about that period of time, or even how long I was on it for before I stopped taking it. At that time in my life, I wasn't very serious about getting better. I didn't believe I was bipolar, and didn't know anything about it. I was sort of "in love" with my depression, I didn't know how to be any other way, and I couldn't imagine being happy. I had some kind of epiphani around that time and convinced my self that I could fix everything on my own. So I'm not sure if it helped or not back then. I didn't really realize that I was showing bipolar symptoms until I quit drinking the second time a couple of years ago, and noticed the pattern of moods. The third time I quit drinking, I read up on bipolar and realized everything that was happening to me made sense. I was determined to change my life, and I succeeded in changeing a few things that were really important. During the time I wasn't drinking I started to understand that it's on about a two month schedule, at least that's about how far it is in between a really bad crash, though sometimes cycles a lot faster between depressed moods and hyper moods. My room mate and people at work, even total strangers, could tell when there was something wrong. I got lazy again, and instead of going for help as I had planned I got into a relationship with a guy that was drinking a lot, and I drank with him, as well as self medicating when I was upset or hyper. That was a few months ago. And the rest is history.