Thank God I found this forum. I really thought I was losing my mind! I needed to be reassured that what I'm experiencing is "normal"—if you can call these terrible withdrawal symptoms normal in any way!
My doctor put me on 30 mg of the generic form of Cymbalta this past February, to manage anxiety and Fibromyalgia. After about 2 months we upped it to 60 mg. in the past month, I felt the stuff was giving me some nasty side effects, plus it was doing very little to alleviate my Fibro symptoms. Then I started having severe panic attacks, out of the blue. I hadn't had those in years. I called my doctor and she recommended I drop to 30 mg for a week, then take 30 mg every other day, and then stop. I took my last pill 8 days ago.
(Recently, my doctor had also put me on an innovative new treatment for Fibro, low-dose Naltrexone. It has helped significantly with the pain, so there's a success story! If you have Fibro, I urge you to check it out. I can't imagine suffering from Cymbalta withdrawal while also experiencing debilitating Fibro pain.)
I am feeling so positive about the low-dose Naltrexone and I feel convinced if I can just rid my system of the evil Cymbalta, I will be a changed person. I think the only reason I haven't lost my sanity is because of the LDN, in fact. I also have .25 mg of Xanax that I can take when the worst hits me, and that helps calm me down, at least.
At first, I felt OK. Then a few days ago I got slammed with nightmarish side effects. I cry at the drop of a hat. I feel like I'm falling sideways, get brain zaps, my hand spasms, I have trouble swallowing, I stumble over words when reading to my kids, and I have foggy spatial orientation. That said, I have times of clarity and calm during the day when the side effects go away, even for hours at a time, and I feel pretty normal. In fact, I'm feeling that way right now. So my initial impulse is to tough this out and assume it will continue to subside and finally go away. I had no idea, however, that side effects could carry on for months and weeks!
I have a bunch of 60 mg capsules left so I can pursue the bead-counting method with those if I need to. I'm on the fence. If I do take the beads out of the 60 mg capsules, how many would be recommended to take per day? The thought of putting this poison back into my body is revolting, but if these side effects carry on (even sporadically during the day), I'm going to go nuts.
I saw on a post that sometimes just taking a 20 mg now and again can help alleviate the worst of this. Is this a method that others have had success with, and what is the "dosing schedule" for that? I guess I'd need to count out a third of the beads in a 60 mg capsule....
Thank you so much for any advice and for this supportive forum!
Jenny