Was taking 20mg cymbalta 2x a day for some kind of neuropathy or fibromyalgia type pain in my hands and feet. (Drs never gave an official diagnosis and couldn't find a cause. I have been taking it for maybe a year and didn't really think it was helping.) Didn't have any side effects, really.
Decided to go off it and none of you will be surprised that the taper rate the Dr. & pharmacist recommended was WAY too fast. I did bead counting extremely slowly and did pretty well until about 10 beads left. Felt a little irritable and stayed at that level for a long time. Then stayed at 5 for about two weeks.
Finally stopped completely about 4 weeks ago. It seemed ok at first, but I became extremely irritable and impatient shortly after and it is pretty constant and severe. Everything drives me up the wall now. Also had lots of nerve pain in my hand and feet. Worse than ever.
The irritability has had a serious impact on every aspect of my life. I'm scared to talk to people on the phone. (I push everything to email where I can measure my response better.) And I'm even afraid that it's putting my job in jeopardy.
I know there is a lot of information here I can help myself to, and I'm usually a RTFM person, but I'm hoping some regulars can chime in and help me out by giving me the broad strokes. I'm feeling rather overwhelmed.
Mainly, I fear that I'm "broken" now from taking this drug. That it's a permanent state. That I'm going to be a crabby, lonely old man yelling at people to get off my lawn and pounding my fist on my desk for the rest of my life. I'm trying to just sequester myself now and wait for it to pass, but how long can I expect this to last?
I've read about people taking very small doses of cymbalta when things get bad. But I don't know if it's a good idea to put it back in my system AT ALL. And if I go back to, say 5 beads 2x a day, then where do I go from there?
And since the pain I'm experiencing now is similar to what I felt before taking cymbalta, how do I tell if it's just withdrawal or if it's the original pain and cymbalta really WAS helping?
Thank you all.