Hello, I have been withdrawing from cymbalta for just under 6 months now, following usage for a 5 month period of at the highest dose, 30 mg of cymbalta. I tapered down from 30-10 mg, at 5mg increments over a 1.5 month period, and then stopped at 10mg. Within the first week, I experienced extreme dizzyness, memory problems, extremely blurry vision, and a huge number of floaters in my eyes, in addition to depersonalization, and derealization which persisted for approximately 3 months, until I started taking 10-20mg of prozac. During the prozac period, I felt slightly better, the dizzyness and headaches went away, which allowed me to work again, but prozac also gave me its own side effects. I stopped prozac at 4 months post-cymbalta, and have been no medication since that time (aside from 10mg of adderall every morning, a shitty habit that I'm slowly tapering from simultaneously).
It's been just under 6 months for me, and I'm not feeling 100% normal, but the vast majority of my symptoms have disappeared. My personality is still off (emotions return, but they are not normal yet), and I have a difficult time thinking creatively, which is really unfortunate, because creativity was my "way to escape" and I dearly miss this ability. I do NOT miss the headaches associated with reading/writing, and I am so damn grateful those terrible things finally went away (approximately 4.5-5 months post-cymbalta).
The first 4 months were pretty much impossible to deal with, and I almost didn't make it out alive. The worst symptoms were dizzyness, complete lack of personality, no emotions, de-realization, daily headaches that lasted all day long, blurry vision, and discoordination. In the second week of month #5, I experienced substantial improvements, and they have continued almost daily since that time. I'm currently dealing with a dramatic lack of energy, some lingering blurry vision, lingering issues with short term memory and perception of events that occurred post-cymbalta, emotional dysfunction, and an approximately 2 fold increase in the number of floaters in my eyes.
I've lost most of the things that used to be important to me, except for my job, which I am grateful for, but I am depressed about the rest of my losses. Unfortunatley I drank some alcohol, to escape the withdrawal symptoms, and that ruined my 6 years of sobriety that I had achieved in AA, so I'm dealing with the consequences of this issue in addition to the lingering cymbalta withdrawal effects.
I don't blame cymbala on drinking, because I chose to do it for personal reasons, but I will likely remember this entire cymbalta withdrawal period as one that dramatically altered the way that I live my life.
So many personal relationships, and professional endevours have been destroyed from this withdrawal period that I can barely begin to list them all out in one post. I am very grateful that my memory is returning, albiet extremely slowly, because that was just terrible, and threatened my career.
Overall, I suspect that I'll be back to feeling normal in the next 1-6 months, but the collateral damages associated with my withdrawal will probably remain with me for 6 months to a year. If my memory returns to normal, I'm guessing many of these effects won't stick around for too long, but I'm still waiting on this to happen.
I'm glad that I did not reinstate this shit, and also glad that I didn't go back on any other type of medication (aside from a 1 month period of being on 10-20mg of prozac). The prozac period really marked the end of the worst symptoms from cymbalta (eliminated the vertigo, and some of the cognitive difficulties, and much of the headaches), but also gave me new symtpoms of its own (really annoying sinus headaches, and numbness in random parts of my body). Most of the prozac symptoms have disspated after approximately 3 months after being off of the medication. I've noticed that I'm very sensitive to other substances, so if I drink a beer, it really messes me up, and many of the symptoms are exacerbated.
I find the greatest releif in exercise, which I perform like 3-6 times per week, for at least one hour at a time. Supplements don't really seem to make any difference to me, but I take them almost daily, just hoping that they will do the trick one of these days (mutlivitamins, omega 3 omega 6, calcium, zinc, magnesium).
Overall, I would strongly recommend tapering off of this drug very slowly, but also switching to prozac prior to getting off of it, and then slowly tapering off of prozac. I wish my doctor had insisted that I switch to prozac immediately upon stopping cymbalta, because I suspect withdrawals would have been much less damaging to my entire life in that case.
I am having a very hard time accepting that this actually happened to me. I feel like someone hit me in the back of a head with a club, and I've been recovering, with some brain damage, for the past 6 months.
The next section of my post is just a summary of the observations I've made from sites like this one, and paxilprogres.org, which I feel are important to relate to viewers, because it's information that doctors simply don't give their patients. I'm no expert, so if I make strange conclusions, please don't hold it against me:
From all of the research on anecodotal posts from the internet, the overall conclusion about these medications seems to be as follows:
-Taper very slowly, and hold dosage reductions for 2-4 weeks at a time. Switching to prozac or another SSRI is almost mandatory if you are very sensitive to the withdrawal symptoms.
-Withdrawal effects depend on the length of your usage, and also the dosage that you were taking.
-They also depend on the age of the person who is taking them, and whether or not you are an active person (i.e., do you exercise, can you exercise?).
However, the three above determinations are suprisingly unimportant, because the length of the withdrawal mostly depends on your own personal genetic makeup. That is, how quickly your body can return hormone levels to their normal values, and how quickly your central and peripheral nervous system can up-regulate your 5-HT (serotonin) receptors, and the norepinephrine/acetylcholine levels.
I have also noticed that people pre-disposed to OCD and anxiety seem to have much worse withdrawal symptoms, and also describe them many months following the cessation of SSRI/SNRIs.
I don't know if it is the demongraphic of individuals using antidepressants or not, but I have also noticed that the majority of individuals who experience protracted withdrawal symptoms, and then post anecdotal reports on internet websites are women, and I seem to have a more difficult time finding posts by men. This isn't suggesting that women are the ones most likely to get withdrawal symptoms, but it is an observation that I've made over the past few months of reading these websites that seems necessary to mention. I don't see any evidence that women and men have different levels of releif, but fewer men sem to post on websites for some reason.
I also notice that some people post VERY enthusastically about taking supplements and changing their diets, and how it's made a tremendous difference. Personally, I noticed very little releif from supplements and diet, and most of my releif came from my exercise regime, and of course, just waiting patiently. I have noticed few rememdies for withdrawal symptoms, aside from the use of prozac as an intervention, and benzodiazepines to help with the anxiety. Some individuals mentioned that the use of medical marijuana helped, but I am scared of trying, because marijuana can also lead to depersonalization/derealization, and I have no desire to risk an adverse reaction with a drug when my body is already very sensitive. I found that cigarettes provide some minor relief, but it doesn't last very long, and you risk getting dependent on a drug that has its own 3-6 month withdrawal period. No thanks, I'm done with withdrawals. Alcohol seems to help temporarily, but the withdrawal symtpoms the following day seem to be worse than before drinking, and then get back to normal within 3 days post-alcohol. Caffeine can help me get work done, but it seems to exacerbate some of the symptoms. I took painkillers (norco) for a shoulder injury, and found them to help kill time, but the withdrawal symptoms from opiods are pretty rough, and last for 1-3 weeks, making this a very dangerous habit to begin. Many people get hooked on pain pills and it ends up ruining their careers, so I'd probably avoid this if you think you cannot control your intake.
From all of the reading of message boards that I've done over the past 6 months, the worst case scenerio for SSRI/SNRI withdrawal seems to be as follows: withdrawal symptoms that last for over 24 months (usually memory, brain fog, and sexual dysfunctions last the longest, but eventually go away). I have only heard about one case of cymbalta withdrawals persisting for more than 2 years, but I was not sure if this person was taking other medications as well. In most cases from other SSRI/SNRIs, most dramatic improvements are seen in the months following the year #1 anniversary. I have noticed that these very protracted symtoms seem to be associated with people who are older (over 45 years old) and quit cold turkey, but not always.
Cymbalta seems to have shorter protracted withdrawal symptoms compared to drugs like paxil, effexor, lexipro - and from the majority of posts that I've read, symptoms can persist for as long as 6-8 months, but only very few people have symptoms that last longer than 1 year. Most people that have documented their recovery (approximately 85%) have complete relief within 1-3 months post-cymbalta, including those taking high doses for many years. I consider myself to be one of the very unlucky ones: take cymbalta at a low dose (30mg) for less than 5 months, but have debilitating withdrawal symptoms for 3+ and then lingering symptoms for another 2+ months.
Please feel free to add generalizations that you have gleaned from websites, or information from your own experience to help provide some reassurance to those of us still suffering from withdrawal symptoms from this medication.
I can't guarentee that I'll post again any time soon, because I do notice that obsessing about the withdrawal symptoms may help reinforce their existance in my every day conciousness, however if you do not hear from me again, you can assume that I'm living my life normally, and have almost fully, or even completely recovered from cymbalta.
