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Wander · Sep 17, 2019 at 12:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ~Christina

I wound up in the Er one night , I was borderline toxic and having my labs checked hourly to see if I might need temporary dialysis. I was done right then .. I was taking 900 mg at the time and had been for close to 2 years.. anyway my labs were always therapeutic levels.

So no taper I just quit it.

Overall I think it’s a good medication for a lot of people. It was the gold standard first medication ever made specifically for Bipolar after all.

The main thing to remember is all meds take time to actually start working and helping , well when the meds stop there’s the half-life issues and then the time your brain needs to revert back to function sans meds..

I truly hope with your taper schedule you will have a much softer landing than my train wreck sick for days and days going cold turkey was.

This is one medication that I will never take again.

Thanks. Going cold turkey must have been tough. It was about 9 days into my taper that the most awful physical symptoms appeared. Now day five of that and it is only slightly abating. I can at least drive today ... in between naps. Just feel like I’m dying. Maybe tapering is dragging the pain out, idk. The horrible thing is after this I have to tackle coming off benzodiazepines. While I’m well with regards to Bipolar I want to cut down on meds. We’ve got robots roaming Mars but cannot come up with a psych pill that ticks all the boxes without this kind of hellish downside.