Beware, pill popping has many perils

DRUG DEPENDANCE: This is a state in which a user's body begins to need a particular drug to feel normal.

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New Delhi: For 55-year-old C K Sharma, it all started at the young age of 24. Sharma was prescribed Lithium - the most widely used drugs to treat a bipolar disorder.

For someone living with bipolar disorder, Life is a constant battle to not kill themselves. It's a psychiatric condition that leaves people swinging between the two extremes of happiness and depression.

"It's like breathing death all the time. You wake up, you are thinking of suicide, you go to the bath, you are thinking about suicide, when you are sleeping, you are dreaming about suicide," says he.

He says the Lithium worked well for him so he continued taking the medicine for more than 20 years.

Twenty years of psychiatric treatment is not unusual, but 20 years of using the same drug is not a good sign. Sharma did not bother to find out whether continuing with the medicine was good for him or not. He did not even go back to his doctor for another round of consultation.

And one day, he started suffering from symptoms like tremors in the hands, sweating and finally, even fits. That's when he finally saw another doctor, Psychiatrist Rajiv Mehta.

"When C K Sharma came to see me, it was clearly a case of side effects of Lithium. Lithium is a very strong drug and it should be changed once the symptoms are under control. His prescriptions showed that he had not followed up enough with his doctor. That's why he was on a prolonged use of Lithium," says Dr Mehta.

Self medication for more than 10 years after the prescribed time is over and C K Sharma should have seen the severe side effects coming.

But if you thought that the perils of pill popping end there, the answer is no. Too much pill popping could lead to drug dependance, something that makes the treatment extremely difficult and like in C K Sharma's case, almost impossible.

His doctors realised this, when they tried taking him off Lithium. Sharma suffered from a recurrence of the bipolar disorder becuase he had become dependant on the drug leaving no option but to be put back on Lithium.

Drug dependance is a state in which a user's body begins to need a particular drug to feel normal.

"You could remain drowsy at times, lose concentration at others. We also see paradoxical agitation happening in some of these patients," says Dr Sameer Malhotra.

Shocking as these facts are, easy availability of drugs, both over the counter and prescription, is making the situation worse.

But while one may not be able to change that, what can be changed is your perception. Making sure that you do not continue popping pills because you may walk in with known problems, you may walk out with dangerous consequences, waiting to happen.