Neurotoxic drugs antidepressants

Psychoactive drugs, including psychiatric drugs, vary in their toxicity. However, all of the major categories of psychiatric drugs—antidepressants, stimulants, tranquilizers (antianxiety drugs), mood stabilizers, and anti-psychotics—are neurotoxic. They poison neurons, and sometimes destroy them. 

Some interactions between lithium and other drugs are beneficial. In approximately 60% of depressed patients in whom conventional treatment has failed, the combination of lithium and antidepressant drugs proves successful where neither drug was effective alone (190, 193, 196, 197). Combinations of lithium and carbamazepine are also increasingly used in the successful treatment of refractory affective illness (198). This combination is generally safe, though the possibility of neurotoxicity should be considered. One additional potential benefit of the use of lithium in this way is the prevention of leukopenia induced by carbamazepine (199). Inosotol phospholipid metabolism is not affected by carbamazepine, suggesting an alternative locus of action from that of lithium (200). 

Tbe neurotoxic reaction cited seems to be an isolated case but it illustrates some of the risks attached to using recreational drugs by patients already taking other medications, particularly antidepressant and psyeho-tropie drugs that affeet the same receptors in the CNS. 

---