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[ec1032am]

My mother has been on cymbalta for about ten years now, she was given it for depression when my dad was dying of cancer. Recently we've come across a crossing point. She wishes she had never been put on the drug in the first place and she wants to be done with it. She's tried getting off in the past by taking a pill every other day, but obviously it didn't work. Recently for some odd reason her prescription was denied, who knows why, but she was already in a mood and said she would quit cold turkey. Well, that lasted just over a week. It was hell for her, and just plain sad for me to watch her suffer. She had panic attacks, and towards the beginning, she was very temperamental, with constant mood swings, add to that several busy days at work that were super stressful, and she was extra depressed. But probably the last two or three days her mood greatly improved, and was relatively constant, but she still had those pesky panic attacks. After she felt a major panic attack coming she gave in and called her doctor to get the prescription at all costs. She's back on it once again but still wants to get off. I'm looking for some good information from people who have successfully gotten off cymbalta. Any ideas, helpful information, or personal stories relating to getting off of cymbalta are welcomed and appreciated.

[fishinghat]

ec1032am, first of all welcome to the site. Unluckily stories like your mom's are common. The most common method used here on this site is called bead counting. First of all you must realize that with a short half-life (12 hours) going every other day is the worse thing to do. About the time you are really dropping down in your serum Cymbalta levels you take another capsule and the blood levels spike back up and the withdrawal you experienced is doomed to be repeated. With bead counting you o.pen a capsule, which normally contains around 200 to 250 little beads, and take out 5 beads before taking the capsule. The next day you remove ten beads, the next 15 beads, etc. This provides for a slow steady drop in blood serum concentration. Now like most addictive drugs there is a lot of variability with withdrawal. In most cases there is only light withdrawal during the bead counting process, BUT once you get down to the final 5 to 10 beads things get worse. The reason for this is that Cymbalta is stored in the liver and fat tissue. Once your level is real low the Cymbalta starts to come out of the liver and fat and go back into the blood stream. When you get down to around 10 beads total per day that you are taking you have to slow down. Usually 10 per day for a week, 9 per day for a week, etc. 

 

Now that is the general method but a couple side notes. Some people find they can drop 10 beads a day and some wind up removing say 3 beads a day. You have to experiment some to determine what works for you. Also, if you get going to fast sometimes the withdrawal gets too much. If this happens just go back up on the dosage by 5 beads, stabilize for a few days and go back to tapering.

 

This is the best solution I can recommend to you. Even using this your mom will have some bad days but with your help she will have a good shot at making it through this. If you have any questions or just want to rant about how you feel, well this is the place for it. We will be glad to help in any way we can.