“How long did you take to come off lithium?” #BipolarFAQ

I know at least 2 people have asked for a lot more detail on this, so please forgive me as I go into detail…

I was told I had to take 800 mg/night lithium on approx.. 1^st Feb 1998.

I have very detailed records of the amount of lithium I took every night and below you will see I put some of these in table form, such that I could graph the reduction against reducing body weight.

It was late 2002 that I got around to asking about reducing the dose and went straight down to 650 mg, which is what I have recorded for 5^th Feb 2003 to 1^st Feb 2005.

I was thinking that I was off lithium by the end of 2010, but really it was not until the end of 2011, so in many ways it is still early days in my med-free life with 13 years and 11 months on lithium and now only 3 years and 3 months off lithium. It was about a year ago that I met with a private GP in Nottingham and his view was that it takes a lot more than 3 years for the body to re-adjust. He seemed to be saying that one could easily continue to lose weight for several years after coming off lithium. Having said that I am hoping my weight has at least stabilized even if I seem unable to put any weight back on at this time.

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