My objection is purely based on the side effects I've experienced, and I've only been on a limited number of drugs. Every mood stabilizer that I've been on has left me intellectually and emotionally crippled. That is perhaps putting it too strongly, but when I stopped the last drug I was on, my internal reaction was "Oh. This is what it's like to be alive. I had forgotten." The really upsetting thing was that I had slowly faded (cognitively) to where I didn't even notice that I was impaired, even though I had stopped getting work done and stopped participating in relationships. I was a pre-op Algernon (or Charlie, I guess), and that's not a person I'm willing to be.

I haven't actually taken lithium. I believe it's not as useful for treating depression, which is my real problem, but it's probably a bad idea for me to have around anyway; psychiatrists avoid prescribing it to patients who have a history of suicidal tendencies, because it is so toxic that it is occasionally used by those patients in suicide attempts.