A nice, refreshing glass of lithium
Before there was ~ alkaline water ~, there was lithia water.
When I was a wee theater kid — shocking, I know. I absolutely do not read as the kind of person who once rode in a Honda Civic to an ice cream parlor in full stage makeup to shriek over tater tots — we used to go to Ashland, Oregon like once a year.
Ashland is a very dusty, south-central Oregon town that you can miss if you yawn for too long during a road trip down to California but it’s also pretty famous in its own right. If you know literally only one single thing about Ashland, it is probably that there is a Shakespeare Festival, which is a very big deal. There’s a lot of infrastructure — the Allen Elizabethan Theatre, which is nearly 100 years old, was absolutely mesmerizing when I was a shitty tween who had never traveled farther than the Bay Area - and the old-timey part of the town is very endearing, even when it is overrun by excessively gesticulating teenagers who believe themselves to be the central characters in something written by either Rogers or Hammerstein or one of the Green brothers. Or possibly Jonathan Larson. Anyway.
Why am I telling you all of this?
Oh right. Because this setting, dear reader, is the first place I ever ingested lithium, and not because a 15-year-old drug dealer had raided his stepmom’s medicine cabinet. Instead, drinking lithium-infused water is a rite of passage for frizzy-haired kids on their way to completely miss the significance of Othello or The Tempest.
Ashland is also home to a large park — almost 100 acres — called Lithia Park, which is a very pleasant outdoor space featuring huge, gnarled old trees, lots of grassy places to sit and pretend you’re deep in thought, and a series of bubbling, burbling fountains. Lithia Park’s main site was once a mill, but now its main product is people making wrinkled faces as they take a sip of the lithium-rich water that comes from these fountains, usually on a dare or possibly due to a case of cotton mouth. Desperate times and all that.
Ashland: Where the fountains flow with extremely weird-tasting water
The lithium-laced water comes from a nearby spring, discovered in the early 1900s. The water from the spring is naturally imbued with lithium oxide, creating an effervescent effect. And back then it was discovered, lithium was already known to have some kind of mysterious benefits, though people didn’t (and still don’t) know why. Several citizens of Ashland banded together to get the spring designated as part of a park, protecting this natural resource.
As a short piece in Atlas Obscura in 2016 notes, there were some attempts to capitalize on this liquid miracle, though they never really went through - probably because a.) the rest of the country tends to forget that Oregon exists and b.) the rest of Oregon tends to forget that Ashland exists during non-Shakespeare times. It’s really far away!
One of my first newsletters was about how lithium was studied on guinea pigs using the urine of asylum patients. You can read that here if you want.
They probably could have if they’d really tried, though. Lithium springs are really rare, but during the health crazes of the 20th century, there was a lot of demand for the benefits, so many water bottling companies either added lithium after the fact or just called their products “mineral water.” But instead, the stuff in Ashland is the real deal and it comes gushing — for free! — out of the municipal fountains in Lithia Park. Except for a short period of time when it was poisoned with other stuff but I think that’s all cleared up now.
What put the “up” in 7UP? Wellllll….
When I first tried it (and then subsequently tried it again on every single visit because you just have to), I remember asking one of our chaperones why it was such a big deal. It was unpleasant, smelled a little bit like old cheese, and didn’t seem to get you drunk or anything, so why bother?
Like, what did the lithium do? Or why was it OK to drink something that really, really seemed like it would be bad for you?
She told me she didn’t know, which was deeply unsatisfying. But then she was just some poor kid’s mom who was willing to drive six hours round-trip to see a play in exchange for watching over a bunch of other terrible kids, so like, I can’t fault her.
Years later - I think when I was prescribed lithium for the first time - I looked it up to find out more and discovered that she wasn’t entirely wrong. We really don’t know how lithium works. We just know that it does (thanks to a lot of guinea pigs who gave their lives for science) and we have known this for more than a century.
Lithium has been used as a treatment for mental health conditions since at least the late 19th century, but lithium springs like the one in Ashland have been sought well before that. People didn’t know why, but this frothy water just made them feel…better?
After John Cade began using it in a more regimented way, lithium became a beloved tool for both doctors and people trying to sell shit to other people. Instead of cooking up snake oil, pressing radium into pills, or grinding healthful cocaine into a kid-friendly powder or paste, hucksters could use cheap, easy-to-get lithium as an additive. It was less deadly (but, notably, not entirely not-deadly) and did I mention it was pretty dang inexpensive?
For a brief, glorious period of time, lithium’s healing benefits were applied to over-the-counter consumer goods including, but not limited to, 7Up.
When 7Up was first introduced, it was sold as a kind of wonder beverage. Advertisements from the late 1920s, when it came to market, touted its “wholesome” nature, advising mothers to give it to children. Got a picky kid who won’t drink milk? Put 7Up in it. Hungover? Upset stomach? 7Up. Loaded with “citrate of lithium,” this beverage could do it all.
And for about 10 years, it did. Throughout the end of Prohibition and into the Great Depression, 7Up featured a crisp, refreshing taste…and medication commonly prescribed for bipolar disorder.
The formula was finally forced to change when, in 1948, the FDA banned the use of lithium citrate in beverages, citing its overuse. When taken too liberally and without the care of a doctor, lithium — which is a salt, remember — can lead to kidney damage and acute toxicity. So like, probably not great to let your baby chug a two-liter of the stuff!
This ban set back research on lithium as a viable therapeutic option, but the believers (like John Cade) continued to work until it was finally sanctioned for use several decades later.
In the meantime, people had to go hunting for their next Miracle Cure For Literally Every Ailment. Everything from B vitamins to iron to sugar — just sugar! — were advertised as the secret to a healthy, happy, and slim life. Everyone wanted “pep” and “vigor,” and they would buy just about any product that promised it.
Nothing worked quite like lithium, though — since, you know, it’s actual medicine that’s still being prescribed. It’s running through my veins right now!
Even after lithium was banned in the 1940s, it was still added to various products. One newspaper story in LA in 1989 highlighted the resurgence of lithium-laced water in popularity - which seems about right because that’s right around the time when Ronald Reagan was gutting the FDA and just before the 1994 Dietary and Supplement and Health Education Act set about relaxing essentially all standards having to do with “wellness” products.
And of course, people are still on the hunt for the miracle cure, whether it’s literal bleach or some kind of meth-adjacent conception cooked up in someone’s backyard shed.
If they wanted, though, they could just move to Ashland, where lithium-rich water literally flows from the fountains, grossing out kids on field trips.