Ami asks: I have been bipolar since the mid 80’s, probably before that.  At the age of 46, I started taking medication for it.  Before meds, I guess you could call it ‘what a long, strange trip it’s been’. 

My question is this:  What about cognitive dysfunction?  Why doesn’t the side effect sheet say point blank “If you take this medication, your memory will go south to retire”?  “You will not be able to think straight” is another one I can think of.  If I had known my memory and mind would have fallen apart like it has, I sure would have done things differently. 

The only mood stabilizer I’ve ever been able to tolerate is Lamictal.  Now my liver is acting up, and I have to go back soon for more blood-work, nothing conclusive yet.  I took antidepressants for four years now. 

My quality of life is suffering, along with everything
else since I started meds. 

What a good question!  I’m going to dive in after an important disclosure.  I am NOT a psychiatrist or medical doctor.  I’m not trained or licensed to dispense medication.  This is my own opinion.  If any psychiatrist or doctor finds a glaring error here, make it known. 

The good news, and the difficult news is: you’re incredible.  Your body is incredibly complicated.  It has, inside it, millions of years of evolutionary secrets, and our scientists have only been trying to crack them for a few decades.  To be blunt, they still don’t have a clue.  Your brain (a single organ of your body) is incredibly complicated when taken separately and studied.  But it is much more complicated when studied as a team player with the rest of your body.  For instance, your intestines break down your food into little molecules and absorb them into the bloodstream.  Some of these chemicals jump right into your brain and affect it by attaching to ready-made receptors that they are tailor made to fit.  Others go to glands and factories all over your body to be turned into hormones and chemicals that fit into receptors in your brain.  They also fit into receptors all over your body, which function very much like brain cells.  It’s easier to say “body/mind” or “brain/body” than to try to separate the two.

Observation #1:  All receptors in your brain/body are built to fit natural chemicals–chemicals either found in your food or made somewhere in your brain/body. 

Your incredible body keeps tabs on the hormones and chemicals running through it.  For each needed chemical there is a kind of thermostat that says, “Whoa!  We’ve got too much of that!  Stop making it and/or get rid of some of it!”  Or it might say, “We’re running out of that stuff!  Hurry and make some more!”  Chemicals are shuttled all over the place in a super complex system where one thing affects another, which affects another. It’s like an eco system, where if the rabbit population is down, then the wolf population suffers too, while the grass grows out of control.  But in a while it evens out because the rabbits have more grass to eat and to hide in, safe from wolves.  Your body is always working to find what it thinks will be a healthy equilibrium. 

 Observation #2:  Because the chain reactions in the brain/body are so complex, we gamble when we play with our brain/body chemistry.  This includes medicines and self-medications.  We don’t really know what will happen.  But we can almost count on having unintended side effects as these chemicals bind to multiple places all over our bodies.  And because our bodies will sense that their equilibrium is being changed, they will try hard to counteract the effects of the drugs, often making the drugs less effective and making us more and more dependent to take higher and higher doses.

Drug companies are, welllll…they’re companies. Businesses.  They want to make money.  And they have figured out how to make a lot of it.  It’s a system that looks like this:  They try to find chemicals similar to those found in the body.  They test them on guinea pigs of various species, and finally on human guinea pigs, to try to make sure they don’t cause strokes, heart attacks, or other deadly side effects that they might get sued for.  They try to prove that these chemicals have more benefits than disadvantages to those who use them.  They send their evidence to the FDA to get it approved.  By the time they get a drug cleared, they’ve spent millions of dollars and hope to make billions back.  Of those billions, they’ll probably put away a billion or so because they know very well that by gambling with people’s chemistry, the odds are high that an occasional person will have a terrible reaction and die or go into a coma and they’ll get sued.  The odds are low to moderate that a large number of people will get liver damage or kidney failure and they’ll have to pay out a big settlement someday.  In the meantime, they’re putting all known side effects in the little tiny print that you’ll probably not read, and advertising the proven benefits of their drug in bold letters.  Then they write the textbooks and fund the colleges that train the psychiatrists to use their products.  It’s a very rational and effective way to make money, and lots of it. 

Here’s what it isn’t:  it isn’t a rational and effective way to help people get well.  The rational way to do that is to 1) study how to support the body’s intake of the natural substances it needs to make it’s own chemicals (remember, it already knows how to make them), and 2) study how to support the body’s efforts to balance its ecosystem.  A few years ago, a study made headlines by announcing that a regular exercise program was as effective as antidepressants.  It took us what, 30 years or so to find this out?  That there’s a simple, all-natural alternative to antidepressants and all of their side effects?  And what are the side effects of exercise?  Greater fitness and quality of life.  (Please don’t get off your medication on a whim and start an exercise program without your doctor’s input.  Think carefully and get good personalized advice and support before making big decisions like this.)  Now remember that our bodies are really complex, and unique.  Some people don’t get the same effect from exercise, and we don’t know why.  It might be that they just need to eat more foods with Omega-3 oils, or eat Brussels sprouts, or get the mercury and aluminum out of their systems, or a hundred other things. 

Observation #3  There’s more risk in taking drugs than in exercise and eating flax seeds.  But the drugs are approved by the FDA for treatment of mental illness, and the natural remedies are not. 

Suggestion: As you try to find the greatest happiness in your life with your unique and incredible brain/body, use medicines (including self-medication) when you are so miserable or dysfunctional that it is worth it to risk temporary and possibly permanent side effects.  Otherwise, see what you can accomplish by getting your body/brain as healthy as you can.  What’s good for your body is good for your brain.  What’s bad for your body is bad for your brain.  If you care for your mental health, care for your body.