Changing tastes

I’m almost through the sec­ond week of lithium, and it’s been an inter­est­ing process. Last week, I was tak­ing 300 mg, and I thought I would die at one point. This week, I’ve been tak­ing it 300 mg twice a day, and try­ing to remem­ber to take it at sup­per. I missed one day– I just am not accus­tomed to tak­ing pills in the evening, since my trig­ger for remem­ber­ing my pills is my morn­ing shower. I did feel really irri­ta­ble the after­noon of the next day, which I sup­pose shows it’s doing some­thing. But really, I’ve been afflicted with far fewer side effects this week, in the sense of no real nau­sea, and only a lit­tle bit of dizzi­ness. My mood is yet to be great, but my fan­tas­ti­cal dreams are return­ing, and I am no longer hav­ing panic attacks– bet­ter still, the sui­ci­dal ideation has gone from active to pas­sive to “don’t be silly, what a mess you’d leave behind for some­one to have to clean up!” Yes, my adult child is stronger than my bipo­lar self once again. How funny that this is a good thing.

I’m more on my feed than I’ve been, but my appetite is still inter­mit­tent, and inter­est­ingly, my taste recep­tors are act­ing dif­fer­ently. I’ve never been a cof­fee addict, but I do have a cup most days, and I have rel­ished a freshly brewed cup at home on the week­ends. No more– cof­fee now tastes like muddy ashes. Like­wise with alco­hol– I had a sip of beer, and it tasted like the wet heaves, bile and all. Tan­nic red wines? Much too strong, and like wood­chips. A fruity red is ok, as is an unoaked white, but a sweeter white? Tastes like syrup. Hot tea tastes bet­ter to me now, and water is the most deli­cious thing in the world. So far, I haven’t noticed that my recep­tors for food have been affected, which is good given how much I savor good food. What a strange side effect, though, and what an inter­est­ing reminder of how intri­cate a con­struc­tion we frag­ile folks are. The mir­a­cle isn’t that we work well, it’s that we work at all.