Note: This article describes my personal experience. It is not medical advice regarding lithium or any other psychiatric medication. Starting, stopping, or changing the dosage of any medication should always be done under medical supervision.

I’m not writing this to demonize lithium. Quite the opposite: for years, lithium was the medication that kept me balanced and helped me get back on my feet during some of the hardest periods of my life. Maybe that is exactly why, over time, I developed an unquestioning trust in it. I believed that as long as I took my medication regularly, I was safe. Meanwhile, blood tests, psychiatric follow-ups, and the possibility that changes in my life could affect my treatment gradually became less important to me.

This is the story of how something that began with panic attacks in 2015 and continued through a bipolar diagnosis, depression, mania, doctors, medications, and years of lithium use eventually brought me to one of the biggest turning points of my life. Looking back now, what I want to tell you is not simply what happened to me, but why it took me so long to understand the consequences of separating a treatment that had kept me stable for years from the medical monitoring that was supposed to accompany it.

My Story Started With Panic Attacks: How Did I Find Out I Had Bipolar Disorder?

It was 2015. I was a first-year Philosophy student at Middle East Technical University (METU).

It all started with panic attacks. At first they happened occasionally, but over time they became so frequent that I was having them almost every night. I would wake up drenched in sweat, my heart racing, and then I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again. I was also living in a dorm, and because I didn’t want to wake my roommates, trying to keep myself under control only made me panic even more.

Eventually, I realized I couldn’t deal with it alone anymore and decided to see a psychiatrist. I went to a public hospital. The doctor prescribed me a low-dose antidepressant and sent me on my way. Standard. I started taking it without questioning it.

About a week later, something I had never experienced before started happening.

My mood went through the roof. I felt incredibly happy and energetic. I felt full of life. For the first time. I also started spending money—buying clothes and things I didn’t actually need. I had never been someone who exercised, yet suddenly I was going out for runs. Even I thought it was strange because I had never been like this before.

Then, within a few days, everything flipped in the opposite direction.

I suddenly fell into a very severe depressive episode. I didn’t want to get out of bed. I cried constantly. The panic attacks came back. I was convinced I was going to die and was constantly battling dark thoughts in my head. I felt terrible, but I had no strength to do anything about it.

One day, a friend looked at me and said, “You’re not okay,” and we went to another hospital together. This time, it was a teaching and research hospital. After listening to me, the doctor asked whether there was a history of bipolar disorder in my family. I told him that my mother had bipolar disorder. He said the antidepressant may have triggered hypomania in me and that although the symptoms I described were consistent with mania, the episode sounded more hypomanic.

That was how I was introduced to lithium.

I started taking two tablets a day. About a week later, I had a blood test. As far as I remember, my lithium level was around 0.70, and the doctor told me to continue with the same dose. After that, I went to regular appointments, had blood tests roughly once a month, and took my medication consistently.

And lithium genuinely helped me.

My mood stabilized. I could attend my university classes regularly again, study better, and function in everyday life. For the first time, I felt balanced again.

I had no idea then how important lithium would become in the rest of my life.

My First Years on Lithium: How Did I Become Stable, and Why Did I Later Experience Mania?

About a year passed like this. Then I went to Prague for Erasmus.

During that period, I was incredibly disciplined about my medication. I never skipped my lithium. I didn’t drink alcohol. I tried to stay hydrated and generally take good care of myself. I had no problems during Erasmus and remained stable.

Then I returned to Turkey.

After coming back, I went through an emotional experience that affected me deeply. I fell into a severe depressive episode. I felt terrible, and right at that moment, I made a huge mistake: I stopped lithium abruptly, on my own.

I didn’t consult my doctor. I simply stopped taking it.

Then I started drinking alcohol and smoking. Suddenly, my entire life turned upside down.

Then the mania began.

This time, it was much more severe than the elevated state I had experienced while taking the antidepressant in 2015. For about three months, I experienced impulsivity, aggression, very little sleep, excessive spending, disrupted eating patterns, thoughts racing endlessly through my mind—racing thoughts—and extremely rapid speech.

Sometimes I would come down a little, closer to hypomania, and then rise again. But overall, I remained in an elevated state for months.

At the end of roughly three months, I suddenly crashed.

The depression that followed was even worse than anything I had experienced before. I was genuinely not okay. Eventually, I went back to a doctor. When the doctor asked what I had previously been taking, I said, “Lithium.”

We restarted it at two tablets a day. When my blood test showed that my level was a little low, the dose was increased to one tablet in the morning and two in the evening.

And I became stable again.

That experience created a very powerful association in my mind:

When I was taking lithium, I was balanced. When I stopped lithium, my life went completely out of control.

That experience became one of the foundations of the trust I would place in lithium for years to come.

Working With Bipolar Disorder: How Did Panic Attacks and Workplace Bullying Affect Me?

After becoming stable again on lithium, I graduated from university.

I moved into my own place and started building my adult life. Sometimes I had panic attacks; at other times, I experienced hypomanic moods. Changes and excitement in my life could easily push me into panic. When I was looking for work and couldn’t find a job, I became depressed. Then I found a job and, this time, felt somewhat elevated and excited.

Eventually, the stress of working life began to take over, and the panic attacks returned more intensely.

I would be sitting in the office when suddenly my heart would start racing. I would sweat, shake, and feel awful. Sometimes I would go to the bathroom and try to calm myself down. I was trying to do my job without anyone noticing while simultaneously trying to silence the alarm going off inside my body.

Then the workplace bullying began.

And it went on for a long time.

Working life gradually became unbearable for me. I became exhausted and fell into a severe depressive episode. This depression felt different from the ones I had experienced before. I withdrew from everything. I was already living alone, and I became increasingly isolated. I distanced myself from people and didn’t tell anyone how bad things had become.

At one point, I started feeling as though I wanted nothing anymore.

But there was still a part of me saying, “This can’t go on. You have to keep going.”

I decided to seek help again. I couldn’t get an appointment at the hospital I had previously gone to, so I found a private psychiatrist. Blood tests were done, my lithium treatment was adjusted—to four capsules a day—and a low-dose antidepressant was added.

I had already left my job by then. With treatment, I slowly began to pull myself together. Later, I found another job. I took the antidepressant for about eight months and was regularly monitored by my doctor during that time. After eight months, we discontinued the antidepressant, and I continued with lithium.

But this was also where another pattern began—one that I wouldn’t recognize until years later.

Whenever I became angry with a doctor or lost trust in them, I would simply stop seeing them altogether.

At the time, I didn’t realize it was a pattern. I just thought, “I’m fine. I’m taking my lithium.”

And for a while, I really was fine.

What Happened During the Pandemic, and Why Did I Lose Trust in Psychiatrists?

Then the pandemic arrived, and my panic attacks became more frequent again.

Around the same time, I moved, changed jobs, and started working two jobs at once. There were even periods when I was working three jobs simultaneously. Because of the pandemic, I was working from home. Somehow, keeping myself constantly busy helped. It distracted my mind.

The cats I had adopted shortly before the pandemic also helped me enormously during this period. Taking care of them and simply having them there with me at home mattered a lot.

The panic attacks never completely disappeared, but somehow I managed.

Then I was fired and found another job. Things went well for a while, but I experienced workplace bullying there too, and once again I started feeling terrible.

I decided I needed to find a solution and went to another psychiatrist.

This time, several different medications were introduced almost at once. I was told to take one when I felt extremely bad and another regularly for my obsessive thoughts. Multiple changes were made to my treatment. Lamotrigine was also added. Within a short period of time, I was taking several different medications, and instead of feeling better, I felt much worse.

One day, the side effects became so overwhelming that the doctor gave me a sedative injection in the office. I remember it as one of the worst moments of my life.

After that, some of the medications were discontinued. Lithium and Lamictal (lamotrigine) remained. The Lamictal dose was being increased gradually. I don’t remember whether I had reached 100 or 200 mg, but at some point small spots began appearing all over my body. Because of the possibility of Stevens–Johnson syndrome, Lamictal was stopped immediately.

Once again, I was left with lithium.

And I was furious with the doctor.

I believed I had been given a pile of medications that had only made me feel worse. So I did the same thing again: I stopped seeing the doctor.

I told myself:

“I’ll just take my lithium. I’ll be fine. I can handle this myself.”

Why Did Lithium Become So Important to Me While I Was Rebuilding My Life?

After that, my life began changing for the better again.

I found another job. I started taking courses. I met my boyfriend. I decided to take my career in a different direction and began developing myself in project management alongside software and editorial work. I took courses, read books, and constantly worked on improving myself.

It was a very productive period.

Later, I got a job at a company abroad and started working remotely. Overall, I was stable and felt good.

I was also taking my lithium regularly.

Four capsules a day.

Meanwhile, panic attacks had never completely disappeared from my life. Sometimes they came, sometimes they went. I tried to deal with them in my own ways. I read books, went for walks, watched movies. I was constantly trying to keep my mind occupied.

There were periods when I felt I couldn’t manage on my own and went back to psychiatrists. But I no longer trusted the new medications they prescribed. One doctor prescribed something and I didn’t take it. Another suggested an antidepressant; I didn’t take that either. Another doctor prescribed something else, and again, I didn’t use it.

Because throughout all those years, my experience had taught me that lithium was what kept me balanced.

Lithium had given me stability. And I had already seen what happened to my life when I stopped taking it.

So over time, I developed an extremely strong trust in lithium.

Maybe too strong.

Lithium Become as Normal as “Bread and Water” to Me

After a while, lithium stopped feeling like a medication I needed to think about.

I took my four tablets every day.

It had become like eating bread or drinking water. It was simply something that had to be done, and I didn’t question it.

But my life was becoming increasingly intense.

I was working a lot. I was traveling abroad. My boyfriend and I were having problems. Home life, work, my cats, responsibilities… At times, everything felt like it was closing in on me.

At some point, I realized I had started letting things slide.

I hadn’t stopped taking lithium. I was still consistently taking four tablets a day. But little by little, I had removed the rest of my treatment from my life.

I wasn’t seeing a psychiatrist.

I wasn’t having my lithium levels checked.

I wasn’t getting blood tests.

Sometimes I drank alcohol, and on the evenings when I drank, I skipped my lithium dose. I had never discussed this with a doctor.

There were periods when I followed restrictive diets. Sometimes I ate very little. I restricted my salt intake. I thought I was paying attention to hydration, but looking back now, I can’t even remember how consistent I actually was.

When I saw doctors from other specialties, I told them that I was taking lithium, but I wasn’t specifically asking anyone to monitor it either.

Because the equation in my head was still the same:

I’m taking my lithium regularly = I’m safe.

Why Did I Start Becoming Forgetful While Taking Lithium, and How I Missed the Early Signs

Then the forgetfulness started.

I remember it becoming increasingly noticeable, particularly during the final six months or so.

The strangest part was not being able to remember whether I had taken my lithium.

“Did I take my medication?”

I kept asking myself that question over and over again.

Sometimes I couldn’t trust my memory that I had taken it. Sometimes I would think I hadn’t taken it and then wonder whether I might have taken another dose. Looking back now, I can’t even rule out the possibility that I may occasionally have taken a double dose by mistake.

My life was extremely busy, and in the middle of all this I wasn’t getting blood tests, wasn’t seeing a psychiatrist, and yet I continued taking the same dose of lithium.

Then other things began happening.

I developed back pain, and over roughly six months it became extremely severe.

I noticed something changing with my vision. I could no longer see things in the distance as clearly as before.

I was becoming a much angrier person. I had always been someone who bottled things up, and during that period I internalized even more. I was more depressed, more stressed, and unhappier.

Sometimes my foot would drag or catch on things while I was walking.

But I never looked at these symptoms as parts of a single picture.

I found a separate explanation for each one.

“I’m tired.”

“I’m not exercising.”

“I stare at a screen all day. That must be why my vision is getting worse.”

“It’s stress.”

And I carried on with my life.

My Body Was Trying to Tell Me Something Was Wrong

During the same period, my caffeine consumption also increased.

I had never been a big coffee drinker before. But during that final year, there was a coffee shop downstairs from my apartment, and I started going there frequently for coffee or bringing coffee home.

Even with all of this happening, I still wasn’t stopping to look at the bigger picture.

I was taking my lithium regularly.

So I assumed I was safe.

About a month before the major turning point, I started another fairly restrictive diet. At the same time, I started reformer Pilates.

And I was doing all of this while working two jobs.

I was extremely busy.

I was extremely stressed.

My boyfriend and I were arguing. I was unhappy. I felt depressed. I was working, exercising, dieting, and simultaneously trying to deal with everything else going on in my life.

At the time, I didn’t realize how much strain I was putting on my nervous system.

I had also been seeing a psychologist online for quite a long time. But I wasn’t completely honest even with them. When things weren’t okay, sometimes I would say they were.

Maybe more importantly, I wasn’t completely honest with myself either.

I was afraid to face certain things.

I Started Feeling Worse and Worse While Still Taking Lithium

Then I genuinely started getting worse physically too.

I constantly felt sick.

My reflux/gastritis was severe.

I was exhausted.

I wanted to lie down all the time.

I knew something wasn’t right, but I still didn’t know what it was.

For months, I had been experiencing forgetfulness. There had been times when I couldn’t remember whether I had taken my medication. My back pain had progressively worsened. My vision had changed. Sometimes my foot caught or dragged while I walked. I was angry, stressed, and depressed.

But I had treated all of these things as unrelated problems.

Then, around April 9, I remember being extremely angry one day.

After that, I started feeling ill.

And I developed a fever.

At the time, I had no idea that this was the beginning of one of the biggest turning points of my life.

For years, bad things had happened when I stopped taking lithium. So in my mind, the danger had always been “stopping lithium.”

I had never considered the other possibility.

That something could go wrong even if I never stopped taking lithium.

Because somewhere along the way, I had forgotten the difference between taking my medication regularly and having my treatment regularly monitored.

I hadn’t stopped taking lithium.

But I had stopped going to psychiatric appointments.

I had stopped getting blood tests.

I had stopped monitoring my lithium levels.

As my life and my body changed, I had stopped checking whether the same treatment was still appropriate for me.

And I had spent months explaining away the signals my body was sending me.

That day, I developed a fever.

I didn’t know it yet, but from that point forward, my story would no longer be only about bipolar disorder, depression, and panic attacks.

A completely different story was about to begin—one about my brain, my body, and rebuilding my life from the ground up.

For the continuation of my story: "Losing Balance, Finding Myself: The Start of My Neurological Journey"