Angel is right about the natural lithium. The natural ones are lithium orotate and lithium aspartate. I buy lithium orotate 200 tablets NCI Advanced Research online, it's about $13.00 a btl. Here's a cheap place to get it.
I started showing the depressive part of my bipolar symptoms in my 20's. In my early 30's the manic began, I didn't know what it was so I called it the "confusing time". As the years past the cycling became more noticable and then finally to where I hardly had any normal time at all.
I read about lithium orotate at http://www.findserenitynow.com, their product worked very well for me in my manic state and only took a few days to get me back to some semblence of normal. This product is rather expensive and the NCI Advanced Research product works just as well.