I recently decided to stop taking Cymbalta and decided to talk to my doctor for the best course of action. He plotted me on the course of slowly weaning myself down 10mg every 10 days (bear in mind I started at 60mg). I reached the 0 dosage on February 6th and the withdrawals still continue. The emotional rollercoaster and the feeling that my head is stuffed with cotton is not helping matters at all. The nausea sometimes is overwhelming.
I have read a number of other posts on here suggesting a super slow taper to finally get off this legalized poison. I am looking for some assistance in this regard. I have quite a number of the 20mg pills left over and hoping someone could give me a correct schedule on how to end this madness.
I will check back here frequently and also accept e-mails at cvandijk07@*nospamprz*yahoo.com (just remove the nospamprz, hoping to avoid robot spammers getting my e-mail address)
The letter I am going to write after this is all over is going to be an eyeopener. I really appreciate any support anyone on here can give me. This is truly a nightmare I can't wait to wake up from.
--Chris
Hi Chris, great to hear that your doctor at least understood that withdrawal from this needs to be slower than the drug company themselves recommend, however it actually needs to be even slower than that for many, as you've discovered.
Nobody can tell you what sort of dose will completely alleviate your symptoms, but personally, knowing what I do now and reading lots of stories, you might be wise to start back on 20mg, or even 10mg might be enough. How did you do the 10mg?
There are two different ways of slow tapering. One is to remove 'x' number of beads from the capsule ever day. Some people do a few more every day, others reduce by a larger amount and stay on that dose until they feel stabilized again.
The MOST important thing is: If you don't feel o.k., don't attempt to drop any further, in fact you can take your dose back up again with this method.
Given you are likely to feel well again fairly quickly after taking Cymbalta again (within a few days, sometimes within a few hours), the lower you start back, the less you have to withdraw from.
regards, Maureen.