Salts drug characteristic effect

The oldest anti-anxiety agent is undoubtedly alcohol and it is certain that this drug is still routinely self-administered for this purpose. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, bromide salts were used to relieve conditions akin to anxiety despite the risk of a characteristic toxic delirium, known as bromism . Alternative treatments, such as paraldehyde and chloral hydrate, were also widely used but these too had adverse effects the former can cause psychosis but the latter is still used as a sedative and anaesthetic agent. 

Ledwidge, M. T. Corrigan, O. I., Effects of surface active characteristics and solid state forms on the pH solubility profiles of drug-salt systems, Int. J. Pharm. 174, 187-200 (1998). 

Lithium is the lightest of the alkali metals (group la) the salts of this monovalent cation share some characteristics with those of Na and K. Traces of the ion occur normally in animal tissues, but has no known physiological role. In the U.S., the drug forms are the salts, lithium carbonate and lithium citrate. Therapeutic concentrations of LT have almost no discernible psychotropic effects in normal individuals. is not a sedative, depressant, or euphoriant, characteristics that differentiate it from other psychotropic agents. The precise mechanism of action of LL as a mood-stabilizing agent remains unknown. 

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