I started my taper tonight. I will be getting a plan together for my whole taper, but the more I read about how Cymbalta has affected people the more apprehensive I get. I'm hoping though to learn from others experiences and mistakes.
If you could go back in time and tell yourself something right before you tapered what would you say? What advice would you give?
Alternatively if you have read something a lot from other people that have tapered please feel free to share that as well.
This might sound cynical but one thing I've learned already is to not tell my doctor I want to taper. I already told one doctor in the past I wanted to taper and she advised jumping down to 30mg (from 60 mg) and tapering fairly fast. I tried to tell her that Cymbalta is particularly hard to withdrawal from and many have to taper much slower. She discounted what I said indicating that every should taper off SNRIs instead of going cold turkey. I told her to look of Cymbalta Withdrawal Syndrome and mentioned lawsuits but I have no idea if she ever did. When she continued to be ignorant I decided to tell her I decided against tapering and wanted a regular prescription. I did take it regularly for a while as I worked on getting better in other ways. But I'm not going to tell the doctor (different one) this week I'm tapering. If I continue getting pills then I should have more than enough supply to taper as slowly as I want and/or need without having a fast taper imposed on me by ignorant medical professionals.
Thank you!
P.S. Addition: I don't believe that all medical professionals are ignorant about the dangers of Cymbalta. But it does appear that the majority are ignorant of its dangers and what strong averse reactions people have to what would be reasonable tapering for other drugs. Ignorance does not mean they are stupid just that they have been misled by Eli Lily and not exposed to enough information to learn the truth. Those that are told by their patients over and over what horrible symptoms they are going through and ignoring them again and again are another story all together.