Hello, this is my first time posting here. I have only read through a few of the threads, so I'm sorry in advance if this is a topic that has already been discussed.
I have been taking 30 mg of Cymbalta daily since 2010 to manage generalized anxiety disorder. (At one point, I did take 60 mg, but I weaned down to 30 mg to save more money). I ran out of my medicine on 1/30/2015 because the online pharmacy I go through was late in delivering my shipment. Instead of going to urgent care, I decided to stick it out and see if I could manage.
The withdrawal symptoms were not surprising, since I had missed doses before and experienced the dizziness, brain zaps, irritability, etc. I managed to plow through the first 3 weeks in spite of the arduous physical symptoms. They are still present sometimes, but they are MUCH less intense than they were during the first 2 weeks. I think what helped get me through the physical stuff was the fact that I was handling my emotions/anxiety okay. I figured, hey - as long as it's physical and it's not an example of a resurfacing of my anxiety disorder, I can get through this.
Not so much anymore. The 4th week has been a nightmare of mood swings, irritability, and worst of all spontaneous bouts of tears.
Sometimes the crying is genuine. I just feel frustrated and sad and I need some way to release the pent-up emotion.
But sometimes it just spurts out of nowhere, for absolutely no reason. And it can be really extreme and unnecessary. For example, my mother was joking with me earlier that she pretty much counted on outliving my dad. We were just lightly making fun of his meat n' potatoes diet; this was not a serious or morbid conversation at all. Then nearly twelve hours later, when I'm lying in bed with my spouse, just before turning off the lights for the day and going to sleep, I burst into tears because I can't stand the thought of my mother dying while I'm still alive.
Sometimes it's also the result of stress. Last Friday, I got so frustrated with the number of new assignments I was getting, I ended up going into my boss' office and choking up. I was ticked because when I ended up delegating some work to my teammates, they didn't complete the assignments with proper care or attention to detail. My boss was sympathetic (probably because I approached the issue from an angle of efficiency), but I know she was a little taken aback by my unexpected outburst. She doesn't know either a) that I've been taking a drug for anxiety or 
that I'm now off that drug and experiencing withdrawal. I've been doing my best to hide the symptoms, but I can tell they do surface sometimes while I'm at work. Even after spazzing out at my boss, at the end of my workday after everybody else had left, I laid my head down on my desk and started to cry again. I'm terrified that if this keeps up I won't be able to handle my job any longer. As the sole provider for my household and a spouse recovering from spinal surgery, this is not an option.
The crying can be a relief because it alleviates this sense of pressure/weight I have on my chest. On the other hand, I am also worried that the pressure in my chest IS daily anxiety welcoming itself back into my life after several years of numbness. I'm sure some of it has to do with the discontinuation of Cymbalta. But I'm also scared that some of it might just be GAD coming back to say, "Hello, I'm still here. I've just been hanging out quiet & dormant while you've fogged up your head with this medication."
Has anyone else experienced crying spells during their Cymbalta withdrawal? How long did you have them? Was there anything you could do to prevent the build up or alleviate things? Did they eventually get better or go away?
