Well done.I have been lingering here ever since the withdrawl symptoms kicked in. I was on 60mg Cymbalta a day for more than a year. Prior to that I was on Prozac for like 20 years 20-40 mg. Anyway my Doc's weaning plan was day 1 go from 60 to 30, do a wekk at 30 then go 20, do 2 weeks at 20 then jump of the cliff (and I mean that figuratively but very close to literally at times during this hell. Any way my thoughts:
1. People on this board should try to do a better job of reporting back when the symptoms stop. Seems like they stop and some people have no reason to continue to post. Maybe it was therapeutic for them to get the anger out through posts and comforting for them to know they are not alone. Those are both good things but so is coming back with a final - "I'm ok now (at least as it relates to teh withdrawl symptoms) and you will be two". That will also allow people to gauge how long your experience lasted and reassure them that they are not going crazy.
2. My symptoms: really started at day 2 or day 3, mostly vertigo, nausea, insomnia and joint pain on the physical side and a roller coaster of ups and downs on the emotional side. Frequent crying spells that interestingly enough made me feel better, like I was letting out the tension or the sadness or the pressure. By day 4, the brain zaps or shivers or whatever you want to call them started and they are still with me today (day 7). Yesterday they got so bad I felt extremely panicked and wanted to escape my mind and body. Knowing that to be impossible, I did the next best thing. I called the doctor and told her to give me something to calm the fuck down or this was going to get ugly. She obliged and prescribed some Clonazepam and that has made these zaps slightly more bearable. So has drinking for that matter but probably not a healthy remedy. This zapping feeling can't be described well - I have seen many attempts to describe it and none of them nail it. I think you have to experience it to get it but they are not fun. Not exceptionally painful but disturbing on so many different levels.
3. Lilly. Fuck you. I would like to walk into Lilly headquarters and round up senior management as well as everybody that serves on the board of directors. I'd like to lock them all in a room for 6 months and force them to take Cymbalta 60 mgs a day. Then I'd open the door take away the Cymbalta and send them on their merry way. I think they would think twice about continuing to sell this product after that. Whatever therapapeutic benefits it has in terms of treating depression and other condition it is prescribed for is far outweighed by the hell that is the withdrawl period. I read someone say it is like withdrawing from Heroin only worse.
4. Caveat Emptor I guess but give me the hard truth on the way in about what the way out is going to be like. "Kinda nasty" or "a little bit rough" doesn't quite capture it. Here are some better suggestions: "hell on earth of an undetermined length", "worse than anything you can imagine", "a perfect storm of emotional and physical symptoms colliding to form a seemingly insumountable wave of sheer terror". I mean there is web page and probably more than one devoted solely to the topic of Cymbalta Withdrawl. What the fuck? Why wasn't I told that? Where are Withdrawl symptoms discussed on the Lilly site?
5. If SSRI is good then SNRI is better. That was basically the pitch I heard. Both Seratonin and Norepinephrine make your brain feel good so clearly giving them both is preferrable to giving them just one. Well when I took my brain's Seratonin away it pretty much just shrugged its shoulders. And when I took them both away it pretty much went ballistic.
Anyway, thats my rant. I am resisting the urge to dive into the topic of drug companies control (direct or otherwise) over the physicians prescribing habits. I simply dont have the concentration to do that at the moment. Hopefully some of you found this helpful. I know I did. I promise to return and let you all know when the withdrawl symptoms subside.
For now I am off to reaserch past and current class action lawsuits against Lilly.
Gonna have to read this again.
Give it the reply it deserves.
Keep Posting
Doob
