Hi all!
I am happy to be here and to have found this site. I am 33 and seem to have been in trouble with Cymbalta withdrawal as most of us here
I started using Cymbalta last June when I was hospitalized due to depression, spent 6 weeks at psychiatry. Looking back at that period, it was really bad, I had some troubles in my private life, but I am not sure it was necessary for me to stay in at all, I would not agree staying in again, and I am really angry at the doc who did not let me go home. But that is another topic... I even changed doc afterwards, I did not think he had any sympathy with me.
So, at the hospital, I got this wonderful drug for the first time in my life, before that I had citapram and xanax for like many years, with a break of a few years when I could successfully stop taking both of them.
We started with 60mg and before winter my new doc raised it to 90 mg. I felt better but was not really satisfied with the result. I put on 15 kg since then and my mood was swinging from euphoric to really bad, but the biggest problem for me was that I was always extremely tired.
When my private life became stable, I felt strong enough to be able to cope with problems without meds. So I asked my doc to start leaving them. She agreed we should stop Xanax first as on the long run it causes dementia, and I could get rid of this relatively easily during this summer.
As a next step I asked to stop Cymbalta. She was shocked and did not really agree so I started to take less of the pills on my own using the same method we used when getting rid of citapram a few years ago.
I started in August, for one month I had only 60 mg per day instead of 90 mg and I felt no problems. No withdrawal symptoms in general.
Still in August one or two times I just forgot to take it for like 2 days, and then I had some symptoms which I was first not aware that they are because of it, so I made some research on the net and found out it is not an easy drug to get rid of (I had no idea about it at all, I was not informed!) I realized that muscle pain like when you have the flu, brain zaps and neck pain were cos of it.
So it became obvious for me that it will not be easy and might take longer than I thought but this much?
Then I started to take 60mg every other day for like one month. This was still relatively easy.
I realized that I need two days without Cymbalta to have the symptoms. So when I started to take it only on every third day I got to know that now it is already going to be tough but it was still bearable. Frequent headaches and gastric acid - these have never been usual for me before.
Now I have reached the point that it is getting really bad as I am trying to have it every fourth day..The second day I start to feel something but the third day is already hell. Today I am on a third day but this time I could not wait till tomorrow, I had to take one tonight as I have such an awful dizziness, cried several times today, noises hurt me, I can hardly concentrate, even composing this text is quite hard, bad memories from the past come back, my thoughts are sweeping and loud etc.
So all in all, I have been reducing the dose slightly for already 3 and a half months now and still I cannot be without it for more than 2-3 days! I have already read that you suggest bead counting but for my dose it would take about 9 months to get over it. I do not want Cymbalta to affect my body for so long. I am not satisfied when taking it either so I want to get rid of it completely. And I have spent already much time with reducing it, I do not want to start again.
HonestIy, I have not consulted my doc since August, I thought I will be successful using the same method with citapram. What do you think of this method? Will it work at all? Or it just does not matter which method you choose, you suffer anyhow?
Thank you
J