Hello fellow Cymbalta users. My name is Brock. This post is going to be about my experiences going through Cymbalta withdrawal, and generally about my life with anxiety.
I began taking Cymbalta after trying a few other medications when I was 17 years old (I am now 20). It was meant to treat my "generalized anxiety disorder." I now regret this; I wish I had taken a more mentally therapeutic route. I did not have my first panic attack until I had been taking Cymbalta for about a year and a half, and since then I have had many severe panic attacks and worst anxiety. I only take 30mg of Cymbalta, though my doctor (a different doctor than the one that originally prescribed the drug to me) says that 60mg is the norm for treating anxiety.
Anyway, starting this summer I have been trying to get off of Cymbalta. Sadly I wasn't in contact with any doctors, and didn't seek medical advice on the matter. The first time I tried to go off cold turkey. I lasted about a week before the withdrawal symptoms got so bad that I couldn't go on. Then I tried (again without professional medical advice) opening the pills and slowly reducing the dosage that way. I took about two weeks to taper down to nothing, but the withdrawal symptoms were still unbearable. So I went back on, but decided to take only 15mg; I would empty out half of the beads from my 30mg capsules. The symptom commonly referred to as "brain fog" was a constant part of my life during the three-or-so weeks that I used this method; I also began to experience increasingly worst panic attacks, which eventually became daily. So I finally decided to seek medical advice.
The doctor I am now seeing (who I think is great) recommended that I go back up to 30mg to see how I felt, since according to her 15mg wouldn't even really do anything therapeutically. I did so. The panic attacks did not lighten up, but the brain fog did go away. I went to the ER one day last week because of a severe panic attack, and they recommended that I start taking .5 mg of Lorazepam in the morning to preemptively stop the panic attacks from happening. This helped quite a bit; if I take the half milligram of lorazepam in the morning, I generally have a good day. The panic attacks became much more intermittent. After that I visited my doctor again, voiced that I want to be off of Cymbalta, and she prescribed me fluoxetine. I have heard that this can greatly help with Cymbalta withdrawal, so I accepted this.
Today was the first day I took Cymbalta and Fluoxetine together. I attempted for the first time in a week to not take Lorazepam in the morning, and I had another severe anxiety attack. I really need to work on my breathing and meditative techniques. Does anyone here have experiences taking Cymbalta and Fluoxetine? I have read about Seratonin syndrome, and that sounds very scary; how rare is it? I am very tired of living life with panic attacks. Thank you for reading this.