So the post I just put out in the New Member section states a bit of my history and current situation but I'll try to recap briefly.

I was diagnosed with depression (unipolar per the most recent DSM-5 rule book) back in 2005. I was put on Lexapro by my primary care doctor and that certainly lifted me out nicely at first. After about 2-3 years of steadily increasing the dosage to keep the depression at bay, I searched out a pdoc and began working closely with her. Once Lexapro became essentially ineffective, we switched to Cymbalta and again that worked initially. After a year or two of increasing the Cympalta dosage and getting to a point of it not being effective, we added Lamotrigine to help lift my mood. Again, this worked initially but certainly wasn't a cure as I still was fighting bouts of depression.

In 2014 I came to a point of feeling that maybe I was misdiagnosed and wanted a clean slate to work with. Without consulting my pdoc, I began a slow titration off both the Cymbalta and Lamotrigine. Needless to say, it didn't go well. I put myself into a hypomanic state followed by a deep, deep depression once I had taken myself off both medications. Once I went crawling back to my pdoc and shared what I had done, our trust in each other was gone so I searched out another pdoc to try and begin again.

I am still seeing this second pdoc and we have a really good relationship going...100% honesty regarding medications, alcohol, life changes, etc. Given a few bouts with hypomania the past 2-3 years, my current diagnosis is Bipolar II. I am currently taking Lamotrigine 300mg, Quetiapine 100mg and Latuda 80mg. I was taking Trintellix 60mg for a few months and then switched back to Cymbalta 60mg for a bit but given hypomania set in for essentially this entire summer, we decided to pull that out of the cocktail just over a week ago. Depression is back, not the lowest I have ever been but certainly not a comfortable place to be.

Now to my question for all of you. I am considering requesting to try lithium. There is such negative stigma around lithium but in my current research, I think lots of the negative press it has received over the years is unfounded. My distrust for pharmaceutical companies and their drive for profits leads me to think they would rather have patients try every new $expensive$ med they put out before trying a naturally occurring mineral like lithium that they certainly don't make much profit on. I am open to any and all thoughts, comments you all may have.

FYI, I am reading a "newer" book on the shelves titled "BIPOLAR, Not So Much" by Chris Aiken, MD and James Phelps, MD. It just came out this year and I really like the honest approach it takes to treating unipolar, Bipolar and everything in the spectrum in between. These two doctors are big fans of both lamotrigine and lithium for treating people on the bipolar spectrum. You can google this book and they have a webpage dedicated to further education as it relates to this book (I would post up the link but this site doesn't allow one to post links until I have something like 10 posts...strange)

Sorry for the lengthy first post as I had lots to explain...future post will be more to the point