Cymbalta Made Me Crazy

I started taking Cymbalta just under a year ago. At first it seemed to really be helping me with the Major Depression I had been experiencing constantly for the past couple of years and off and on all my life. When I started Cymbalta at 30mg I was sick and throwing up for 3 days before my body adjusted to the medication. I then was went up to the prescribed dosage of 60mg. I felt somewhat better but continued to feel mostly blah, with very low energy and enthusiasm in life in general. After about 2 months my doctor increased my dosage to 90mg. Within the first couple of days I felt like I was happier than I had been in years with energy and interest in actually doing things. However, my behavior also started to change in subtle ways I was not fully aware of at first. I began feeling more emotional ranging from sad to happy feelings, like a pendulum swinging from one to the other. And the emotional swings got more and more extreme. I started acting out in my behavior, over spending my money and going into debt, lying to my friends to cover up behavior I didn't want anyone to know, flirting at work, expressing strong and unreasonable flares of anger and generally just indulging in very self-destructive behavior. Physically, I was also having symptoms of night sweats, insomnia, occasional dizziness, back aches, a feeling pressure in my head, and energy fluctuations, from high energy to low. Finally, someone close to me suggested it could be the Cymbalta causing me to act out and have low impulse control.

I am now in my 4th week of weening myself off the drug. The step down from 90mg to 60mg was pretty easy, only about 3 days of feeling tired and waves of dizziness. I stayed on the 60mg for two weeks and then decided to step down to 30mg. Now I am in the throws of feeling like I have the flu, with constant waves of dizziness, achy muscles, feverish, sore throat, headaches, feeling like my head is stuffed full of cotton, low energy, and this weird kind of pressure in the area of my forehead. After reading a lot of the information on this website I decided to try splitting up the beads in the 30mg tablets and taking 45mg for a few weeks, before going back to 30 and then 15. I'll see how this goes and try to post and let you know.

I'm also taking 200mg of 5-HTP to try and help mitigate the withdrawal symptoms, not sure if it is working though, I'm also having to take melatonin almost every night in order to be able to sleep with out waking up, tossing and turning and sweating, I've also been noticing strong angry and sad feelings that are unreasonable to the situation. Other supplements that I am taking are Vitamin D, Iron, and Emergen-C. I may look into some of the other suggestions I've seen on this site.

A couple of things I'm curious about regarding Cymbalta symptoms are has anyone else has noticed in their experiences 1) a correlation in any symptoms you had getting on Cymbalta that are the same or similar to getting off? and 2) Did anyone else experience a worsening of depression, emotional extremities, and/or lack of impulse control while taking Cymbalta?

Thank you for this forum to express myself and my experience as well as see that I am not alone in struggling to recover from the effects of this medication. - Missing My Zen

Cymbalta Withdrawal Support and Cymbalta Side Effects Help: Cymbalta Made Me Crazy - Cymbalta Withdrawal Support and Cymbalta Side Effects Help