 Alright, so Peter, I got an email in from one of our members recently who was asking you a couple of questions about bipolar disorder. Oh, is that the one that watched my video that we did about bipolar, my story about bipolar? Yeah. She has some very good questions. Yeah. And these questions have come up a few times from different people over the years. Yeah, they have. So she's given us permission to read the email, obviously not sharing any of her details. So it says, Hi Peter, I'm 33 years old and I was diagnosed with bipolar type 1 in 2010. After taking lithium for 10 years, I started reducing it in June last year. My main motivation was to try to conceive a child without lithium. So from June 22 to January 23, over a period of six months, I reduced the dose by 20% each month. Oh, that's big. I now understand that my reduction plan was far too rapid because in January I stopped sleeping and I fell back into a long period of mania of three months. Yeah. I was hospitalized twice and followed by a long period of depression. Today, I'm back on lithium as prescribed by the psychiatrist. Although the experience was a failure and discouraged me, I'm still afraid of the long-term side effects of lithium as a psychotropic drug and I'm still determined to get off of the drug this time more slowly. Could I ask you, were you diagnosed with bipolar type 1? And she says, I'm asking this because I'm afraid that my type of bipolar, which includes experiences of mania with psychosis and depression, is too severe to succeed in getting off the meds. And her second question is, is life without lithium really possible? Thank you so much in advance, wishing you all the best. So what do you say? Well, first of all, I need to say Susan, no, your real name, Susan, you haven't failed. You have learned one way in which it doesn't work for you. Okay? There's a big difference. And I know it was painful because you went three months in what could be described as another pleasant period. But there you know that one thing, 20% reduction is too fast in lithium. Remember, you have been accumulating lithium in your body for 10 years, right? So if you cut it down too quickly, the withdrawal symptoms, which is what happened to you for three months, the withdrawal symptoms are going to be huge. So by reducing it more little by little with the help of your health provider, then what you can guarantee is that you can almost make those withdrawal symptoms imperceptible, you know, like they almost disappear. This is an important point because a lot of people, it's hard to tell what's withdrawal and what's now that I don't have as much medication in my body, what's the original symptoms. Exactly. Very careful. Because we mental health specialists have a tendency to say the person when you do remission, ignoring the fact that we know that every single drug has got a withdrawal symptoms that sometimes are worse than the actual illness that he's trying to prevent. So that's something that we need to remember. When you stop a drug, especially a drug as strong as lithium, it's one of the most powerful ones, there will be withdrawal symptoms. So what we need to do is to do it so slowly that by the time you get to almost nothing, you know, feeling very different. And then you also have time, Susan, to put in place all your other coping strategies. This is not as simple as, I don't want to take more medications, so I stop. No, no, no, no, no, that's not simple like that at all. I want to reduce my medication. I'm going to do it wisely. And at the same time, I'm going to put all the strategies and coping mechanisms I need in my life that may include therapy. I was in therapy for a long time and then I went into coaching. I've spent a lot of time in these areas trying to understand myself, trying to get clarity as to what I wanted in life, what works for me and what doesn't. And it's possible that Susan did too. It's possible, but we don't know, Susan. The benefit of everybody out there who's in the same boat. So I have no idea. But, you know, speaking from experience, because I did the same thing. I stopped my medication and then I had to be put back on to this later. Well, she didn't stop. She reduced at least 20% seems like that would be reasonable. But I stopped mine and then I had to be put back on because of the withdrawal symptoms. They were terrible. So, but from speaking from experience, it's, it's, we want to do things quickly and as simple as possible. And sometimes there's no short cutting what you need to do in order to make sure that the next time you try this, it happens for you. So that's important. And the other one was the ground. The first question was, were you diagnosed with type one bipolar? At the time, at the time when this happened to me, we didn't have type one or type two. There was no that distinction. That's a distinction that came later. So I can't say that. But from what I can see of my symptoms, it would fit with it with the type one. So for those who just to jump in, for those who want to know the difference, type one is where people have severe episodes of mania and then the depression and the criteria is you have to have mania for at least seven days, most of the time for at least seven days. Or it has to be so severe that you need immediate medical attention. Whereas type two is where people go into what they call hypomania, where it's not quite a severe or intense, but obviously still impacting the person and then the depression. So it's a question of severity of the type one symptoms, which in some cases, like this one here, can the mania can get to the point of psychosis? I was lucky that I was never put on lithium. I was put on the other step and not lithium. I don't know what how my body would have reacted. I think knowing my body would have reacted worse to something as strong as lithium. But, you know, that was my experience, but my experience also includes that this is not as simple as cutting down your medication. You need to have a strong social structure around you. You need to make changes in your life. You may not want to make. I had many changes I didn't want to face, and that was part of the contributing problem. Your other question is the life with the lithium. And is it possible? The question is, is it possible? Most people live without lithium. So, yes, it's not only possible, it's quite probable. Now, is it possible for you? We won't know until until you try to do it slower. Make sure that you have really good support systems around you. Have good have good relationships with your family, not the toxic members. But, you know, look for other members in your family that are not toxic, that will support you, that will love you is very important. One thing you've said many times is that having someone whose perspective and opinion you can trust and rely on when you can't be sure of your own, so that you can test against them and say, hang on, is my thinking like reasonable here or have I gone too far? Am I too extreme in my thinking around things? So you can pick up those if those warning signs early and do something about it early as you go through this process. You said that that was important. And the issue of insomnia, it was very, very much that's a reality and I had that too. So I had to learn how to fall asleep, what worked. In my case, I'm not sure, I'm not saying this will work for you because I'm not giving advice because I don't have the full picture. I can just share my experience. In my case, I tried volume. That was not good for me. It made me feel really crap in the morning. And also there's a problem with the temacepanum and volume is that you can get addicted very, very easily. And it's very hard to stop later. So I wouldn't recommend that. Look for more natural ways of getting your body to sleep. Melatonin, especially the one under the tongue spray melatonin. I find that very, very good for getting me to sleep. And having, you know, simple things like having really dark room when you're going to sleep. And I know it's very tempting when you're having insomnia to grab your screen and watch a movie on that. But that makes it worse. It takes longer. It's almost better to be bored in bed for a while. Until your body just knocks off. So you've got to find out what your body needs to do and what you need to do with your body and your mind to do that. One thing that helped me a lot was a gratitude list. I did a gratitude list for years. And I find them extremely beneficial because that was a good way of going into bed with a positive, nice energy to me. So I'm not sure if this is being helpful, but I can only describe my experience. But it wasn't. I also I also had a personal goal that I set up of reading a hundred books because I've considered myself a non-finisher. So I said, how do I can I prove to my my psychology, my neurology that I can finish things? And what I did was that read a hundred books and I continued. That was a great thing to do. So there's all these aspects as well. Reading what you need to read, for example, if you if you if your soul is because you tell me that you want to have a baby, if your soul feels like family is important, relationships are important. What about books that teaches you on how to be a better, you know, what is required to be a better friend to start with? What is required of of you to be a better husband or a better wife? You know, so that when it comes to that point, you'll be ready to be the person that you need to be for that other person. Because there's too much emphasis nowadays, is he Mr. Right or if she Mrs. Right? That doesn't matter. The question is, are you Mr. Right or are you Mrs. Right? That's the real question. It's not about people don't want to be my friend, is what do I contribute as a friend? Do I have something to contribute? I'm always, you know, a sour, puss face. You can't be that, you know, so these are things that have got to with your psychology, your personality, but they'll all impact on how you feel physically and your ability to sleep at night, which is very important in this case. But just to go back to this question, is this possible to do? I mean, not just in your case, but there's thousands of people around the world who have at one point been diagnosed with bipolar, including type one, who have managed to find what works for them. Including many of the things that you've talked about. And I mean, there's lots of people out there. So I think it's important to keep that hope. And it, but it is a process of finding out how to do it for me, because everyone's case will be different. And this is absolutely not professional advice, you know, for anyone out there, we recommend you go and speak directly with the professionals that you trust. And if you don't trust the ones that you're working with, get second opinions, get third opinions, get fourth opinions, but go through that process, getting personal advice for you, because this is general. And I understand that if you're in suffering right now, you don't want to hear that there's work involved, because it may seem overwhelming. And I completely get that, you know, when I was experiencing that, any idea of work or homework was overwhelming. But, you know, it's worth it. It's worth it. Because when you, for example, do a gratitude list, your life doesn't improve a lot. It doesn't feel like it's improved a lot. Maybe it's improved only by half a percent. But if you improve half a percent every week for the next two years, by the end of five years, you will see huge positive changes in your life. That's worth it, you know, and keep on being positive. You can never lose hope. I mean, what's the use of me telling you that you can never achieve the goal of becoming well? What's the use? How would that be helpful to you? That wouldn't help you at all. Plus, it's not real. We know tens of thousands of people get better from bipolar type one and the other bipolar all the time. It's a delusion that we've created on the mental health system to think if you have bipolar, you can never get well. Well, that's bullshit, plain and simple. Plus, it doesn't help anybody. So never lose hope. You learn one way on how to not do what you want to do. Try different things, never give up, never surrender. I hope that's useful and we wish you all the best, not just to Susan, but to everybody that's watching this video that is on the same boat. Please, please, please never give up, never surrender. Hi, I'm Emmy Golding, Director of Psychology for the Workplace Mental Health Institute. We hope you liked the video. If you did, make sure to give it a thumbs up. We have more and more videos being released each week. So when you subscribe, you'll get a notification letting you know when a new one's just been published. So make sure to hit that subscribe button and don't miss out on this vital information for yourself, your colleagues and your loved ones. Hi, I'm Emmy Golding, Director of Psychology for the Workplace Mental Health Institute. We hope you liked the video. If you did, make sure to give it a thumbs up. We have more and more videos being released each week. So when you subscribe, you'll get a notification letting you know when a new one's just been published. So make sure to hit that subscribe button and don't miss out on this vital information for yourself, your colleagues and your loved ones.