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[Ouhoo]

I have been one of the many who checks in to read the posts of others but who hasn’t posted. But since this site has been beneficial to me I thought I ought to contribute.

The big question many people ask is how long it takes to be completely off Cymbalta. I can only share my experience. I had tapered off by going from 60 mg. to 30 mg. then to 30 mg. every other day as prescribed by my doctor. I had been at that level for about a week when I found this site. After reading the experience of others I decided to go cold turkey.

My worst symptom was nausea but I also had a bad case of restless leg syndrome in my arms. It was so bad at night sometimes that not only could I not sleep but my wife also could not sleep. I was constantly jerking and shaking my arms because I couldn’t keep them still. Finally my doctor prescribed something (pramipexole dihydrochloride 0.125 mg) that allowed me to sleep at night. I also took it during the day sometimes when the restlessness was bugging me too much.

The upside was that the Cymbalta cloud began to lift. It had fogged my consciousness, suppressed my memory and tripped up my mental acuity. After about a week I noticed that my mental functioning was improving and that kept me motivated to stay off Cymbalta.

The reason I started on Cymbalta was that it is useful for peripheral pain and it did work pretty well for that. Now that I am off the drug some of the peripheral pain has returned. If there were no side effects to Cymbalta I’d be back on it in a minute. But unfortunately there are side effects and I decided that the suppressed mental function is not worth it—at least for now. I’ll try to work with my doctor to find something else to help, but I’ll do so with a healthy skepticism.

During the withdrawal I constantly wondered how long it would take. Finally I set 6 weeks as the mark for a complete withdrawal because that is the time, at most, it takes for the drug to relieve depression. They say that if it has not worked by 6 weeks then it is not going to work. That turned out to be a pretty accurate timeframe for me. Of course everyone is different and the time for others will vary greatly. But for me 6 weeks was about the time it took for my primary symptoms to go away. I may still have a little residual impatience from time to time but I’m not sure at all that is related to Cymbalta. I noticed that Newbie posted that 8 weeks was the timeframe for Newbie. In fact for me it was a process of gradual improvement. Toward the end of the 6 week period I’d have some days no symptoms but then the next day they would hit again like a thunderclap. I have now been off for about 7 weeks and have no had symptoms for about a week. Hopefully there will be no more thunderclaps.

The nervous system is the slowest part of the human body to heal. When you muck with it you have to expect it will take a long time for it to recover. But we all need to have a time we can look forward to when we can expect the recovery to be over. For me that was 6 weeks.