ONE MANIC-DEPRESSIVE’S STORY : Real Estate Executive, Under Treatment for 18 Years, Explains How the Illness Affects His Life

Jedediah Smith--that’s not his real name--is a USC-educated, Los Angeles real estate executive who for 18 years has been under treatment for a manic-depressive condition.

Thus, he has been following the Mike Tyson story this fall with some interest.

“There’s no real way for me to know Tyson’s situation because I’ve only been exposed to my situation,” Smith said the other day.

“But I know this: The treatment varies a good deal for those who have a manic-depressive personality, as I have.

“In my case, I take a lithium pill every morning. It’s like taking a vitamin pill, and it’s all I need.”

It’s all he needs, he added, to live what he says is a normal life in all respects.

“If I were a professional fighter, I feel that sure, I could fight,” Smith said.

And he suspects that this would be true for anyone else on lithium, regardless of the dosage.

“I know people who take 8 or 10 times as much as I do,” he said.

“The medical problem (for manic-depressive persons) is just that the lithium that everyone needs doesn’t stay with you. Somehow, you just don’t retain it.

“The doctors work with you until they get the right (daily) dosage. After that, no problems.

“The amount I need happens to be very small.”

As a youngster, Smith said, he had always experienced emotional highs and lows. Then on his first job he was sometimes so depressed that some days, he couldn’t get himself together and go to work.

“I’d just fall apart,” he said

At his doctor’s office, tests disclosed the nature of his trouble, and lithium was then prescribed.

“I’ve taken it regularly, and never had any side effects,” he said. “And I don’t have those (high and low) episodes anymore.”

As an executive, Smith spends much of his workday at a desk or on the phone, or calling on customers. By contrast, as an athlete, Tyson spends his workdays getting knocked around in a boxing ring.

So Smith’s doctor, Robert M. Hodges of Arcadia, was asked if manic-depressive boxing champions or other athletes could expect to get the same benefits that Smith has enjoyed from treatments similar to Smith’s, including proper dosages of lithium.

“I doubt it,” Hodges said. “That’s too speculative. I haven’t treated any great string of athletes.”