After my father died almost 27 years ago, I foolishly went to my mother's psychiatrist (never go to a family member's Pdoc, lesson #1) who Px me Lithium for my grief. Can anyone say cruel irony?

Within a couple of weeks, Lithium was like one of those Death Eaters from the Harry Potter books/movies, in that it sucked my essence right out of me. I resembled the walking dead; I lost my sense of humor, well, all of my emotions disappeared, and the world appeared and felt grey to me all the time. I couldn't focus on the smallest task let alone drive myself anywhere, and I stopped the Lithium cold turkey about 4 months after I started it. Guess what happend after that - it destroyed my thyroid gland because my body went haywire after that.

What disturbs me, is that my mother's Pdoc never diagnosed me as bipolar or anything to justify giving me Lithium. I was a dumb 21 year old taking something for grief, which I shouldn't have been. This is why I don't trust psychiatrists anymore. And I've tried various drugs over the years that I stopped because all they did was impair me with their side effects rather than address the so-called reason I was prescribed them in the first place.

Anyway, yeah. Lithium is the Death Eater of humor. If you take it, you stop laughing. At everything.