401 replies to this topic

[thismoment]

Xanazul

I am so happy for you!

[AnotherMind]

Confused - something's changed. I feel worse now when I take my tiny dose of Cymbalta than I do during the day as I go about enduring the withdrawals. Up until yesterday it was the opposite - the dose relieved the symptoms, now it makes me feel really sick.

 

Wondering if this means I should go cold turkey now? -

 

My skin has erupted in a rash and I have very sharp stomach pains and surges of anxiety and despair when I take the meds. Time to let go?

[gail]

Hello Anothermind,

 

Same thing happened to me while on the crap, on the fourth month while being on it ,30 mg, as soon as I swallowed it, I would feel great anxiety and despair.

 

The last month on 15mg, it got worse. There and then, went cold turkey. I could not take this anymore. Thinking back, I would do the same.

 

I cannot tell you if you should go ct, what tiny dose are you on?

[AnotherMind]

Thanks Gail - that's really reassuring.

Im taking roughly a 5th of 30mg - was fine til I took the dose tonight, now stalking round the house with sweats/chills, mighty headache and stomach pain. All on edge.. 

 

It feels like my body has turned against Cymbalta  - time to make the clean break!

[gail]

Anothermind,

 

Of course, you can do it this way.

 

Or go back to the dose you were comfortable with, and remove 1 or 2 beads a day, then 2 or 4, then 3 or 6, and so on.

 

They say that the last beads are the hardest.

 

Keep us posted, and keep in mind, that what ever way you do it, there will be discontinuation symptoms.

And we are here to help you through it.

 

You will make it one way or the other.

 

 

 

,

[FiveNotions]

AM, you're making great progress....Fishinghat and others have said that the lower the dose, the harder the withdrawal effects can seem....just hang in there....drink lots of water to help flush the poison out....also, I used the yogi detox tea...gallons of it ;-)

[AnotherMind]

Thanks for your words everyone - last night I actually slept without Temazepam also - Ive woken up feeling incredibly positive and strangely...well. (what is this foriegn feeling? )

Some sort of end in sight!!

[Xanazul]

So tired and anxious today!!!!

[thismoment]

Xanazul

 

With a swimmer's stroke

Ringing the billows back from my drench'd hair,

And laughing from my lip the audacious brine,

Which kissed it like wine-cup, rising o'er

The waves as they arose, and prouder still

The loftier they lifted me up

 

-Lord Byron

 

 

May the next wave lift you up!

[xman]

Lovely poem posted by TM.

 

May you be lifted by whatever way brings you back to "baseline". Anxiety is a hard-ball player; it wants us to succeed but it ends up making us sick. For myself today, I am going to YouTube video featuring Jon Kabat-Zinn.  

 

I was listening to a Harvard professor who teaches a Happiness class. He has been to 50 countries and has spent a decade or more studying what makes ppl. happy. It is said this class has the highest enrollment at Harvard, where you would think economics would trump happiness...He says, forgive me as I cannot think of his name, "the opposite of happiness is apathy". That had my attention and has me reflecting on my crapalta-induced apathy, of which I have engaged in for years... 

 

Sending anti-anxiety thoughts to Canary Isle.

[AnotherMind]

Morning good people

Thanks for the poem TM - beautiful.

 

Xman - are you referring to Prof Mark Williams - he has researched mindfulness and happiness? ... https://www.youtube....h?v=WY08aXxor20 ( here's a great talk from him at Alain de Botton's School of Life in London)

 

Andrew Solomon is another amazing speaker on anxiety and depression: http://www.ted.com/t...secret_we_share

 

Xanazul - I do hope the anxiety is abating - I'm right there with you  - my first day cold turkey and it's awful beyond words. Anxiety is capricious and pervasive - it tries to attch itself to everything - exhausting.

 

Im relying on diazepam courage today.

 

Take care everyone

[AnotherMind]

Scared, dizzy, nauseous, self-harming thoughts, confusion, fever, fatigue and pain. This is diabolical.

How merrily and readily they prescribe this substance. Astonished and sad.

[Xanazul]

AM,
Yes I believe xman was probably talking about M Williams, one of the first psyquiatrists to follow Jon Kabat-Zinn in its theories about MBSR. He and two others wrote the book: "The mindfulness way through depression"and begin more than 10 years ago to do research and practice in the use of MBCT (mindfulness based cognitive theraphy) in treating depression and prevention depression relapses The book comes with a CD with Kabat-Zinn guided exercises: body scan, stand yoga, breathing space.... I've actually bought a talked extracted version of the book and the instructions to do the training (not sure who of the three authors, Williams, Teasdale or Segal is the one that talks), plus the guided practices by Jon Kabat-Zinn
The talk by M Williams you linked is wonderful and so is the poem he quotes

Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to the life
We have refused
Again and again
Until now
Until now

I can totally relate to how you are feeling. It gets better though some times it strikes back (yesterday was one those days for me, I hope it will be better today).

We will get through this and live

[gail]

Good morning Xanazul,

 

I have one week difference with you in discontinuation.

And something has happened in the last 7 or 8 days, I would call it a miracle and want to share this with you.

 

I have been waking up around 6am, and want to lay in bed, relishing the way I feel. No panic, no anxiety, just plain normal feeling.

No racing thoughts, after 10 or 11 months of being afraid to go to bed and being afraid of the waking up pattern of fear, this has left me.

 

I developped this when starting on lexapro followed by crapalta, may of 2013.

 

I still have moments in the day when I dont know where to throw myself, no way in, no way out. But this morning nightmare has ended. And that was the worst.

 

Hang in there Xanazul, miracles do happen!

[Xanazul]

I used be awakened with anxiety for a short time before Cymbalta, but that nothing compared to this.
I feel so much comforted for your experience!!!
And so happy for you.
How is your mindfulness training going.
I started monday and had done every one of the tasks
Also on monday my first session of exercise (15 min pedal krank+30 min walking to home from work; 20 min+30 min yesterday)

[gail]

Xanazul, mindfulness is going well.

 

Slowly, but everyday. I must tell you that as for the body scan , not a big fan there.

2 or 3 sessions of meditation , short periods are at the moment all I can do.

 I'll stick to this schedule for a while. I find it enough.

 

No exercise program, no energy for that. My work requires being on my feet most of the time, and have 5 flight (étages)of stairs to get to my apartment.

 

Wish you well on your new routines, and, yes, we will get there. Slowly, but we are getting there.

[AnotherMind]

2nd day no Cymblata. So DIZZY - I keep falling sideways. Evertime I move my eyes the room flips upside down...eeek.

[thismoment]

AM

Hang in there!

Maybe start a Moleskin Journal, a kind of zany diary! Entries could be drawings, scribbles, dried leaves, insights, droplets of red wine, blood, sweat, and tears- an off-worldly English Patient's Herodotus! I wish I had done that when I withdrew. This will be sweet-and-sour grist for your creative mill; you are a stranger stepping into a strange land!

Keep us posted!

[AnotherMind]

That's just what Ive been doing TM - "stranger stepping into a in a strange land" - so beautifully said.

Here is one of the little micro stories I recorded... maybe we've all been there at moments...

 

 

Serotonin

 

I lived a day that was full of fear and wonder.

 

While my body was as heavy as lead, my mind succumbed to a strange docility. In this slow world, arms and legs swam heavily in a semblance of co-ordination. I could hold no thoughts; instead they pooled like stagnant air at the edges of my awareness, inchoate and irretrievable.

 

Time had no shape - to walk the length of a street took eons.

Everything pulsed with a kind of vitalism. The plane trees were as pallid and vascularised as forearms and wore the trajectory of growth - its bruising’s and distortions. I laid my hand on one and could identify no distinction between my own skin and the mottled bark. Nor could I not discern scale; seeds and insects toppled towards me as meteorites, snagging in my hair with the weight and girth of galactic debris. Roses along the fence line were frightening in their tumescence and colour. Birds regarded me with a terrifying ferocity of sentience. The jumping spider's spinnerets fidgeted like huge weavers hands. The line it spun shone, cleaving the evening open in its wake.

 

The warm air swam about me like amniotic fluid, its thickness suspending detail like particles in aspic. Everything was voluptuous with a disquieting anima.

 

On this day I was a somnambulist - yet never had I been so awake.

[thismoment]

AM

 

Oh that's good! Thank you!

 

"The warm air swam about me like amniotic fluid, its thickness suspending detail like particles in aspic. Everything was voluptuous with a disquieting anima."

 

I especially like the way you tied it up with a bright red Jungian bow! 

 

Of course some days will be stone (apologies to John Denver), but those days are for putting pain to paper or scissors to rock- anguished petroglyphs. 

[AnotherMind]

Thanks TM! Woudnt it be an amazing project if we got these impressions from the many who have gone through this - a sort of collective journal of the withdrawal experience - it's so hard, yet an incredible experience. (Despite it's fear and pain)

[FiveNotions]

AM.....wow! You, TM, Gail...have the gift of expression in writing.....this needs to be shared .....widely.....thank you!!

[fishinghat]

FN, a gift in writing? That is an understatement!!! When I read their posts I feel like a kid in kindergarten who has a long way to go. What a gift indeed.

[gail]

Fn, you can write my name off. I do not understand anything about poetry.

 

When I read Anothermind, on serotonin, gosh, I wish that I could write like this.

 

And as much as I read it, I could not comprehend most of it, that is frustrating.

 

I have no gift what so ever in this poetry thing, my writing is so simple and without metaphores.

 

No paraboles, could never understand those. JC used them often, I guess that he thought why make it simple when you can make it complicated.

 

Simple mind, simple writing for me.

Anothermind, I am in awe about your writing. Tm has this gift also, bravo for you both.

[Wagtail]

Very poignant writing & yes I agree with FH & Gail I wish I could write like that , I have trouble just getting my point across let alone make it entertaining. It's a gift !.
Keep it up guys it take my mind off my s/e's ..:-)))))

[TryinginFL]

I'm with you on this, fh....  I feel  very much like a child trying to understand

[AnotherMind]

Gosh - I hope I didnt alienate people with my story post. Not the intention. xxx

 

I've read nothing but articulate posts here.

[fishinghat]

Certainly not for me. This site is full of remarkable people, each with wonderful gifts they can share with us. This diversity is often a source for wisdom in our fight against Cymbalta. Aleinated? No but certainly jealous. lol

[AnotherMind]

It's true FH - amazing people here. Ive drawn so much consolation and wisdom from this site. People, I couldnt have gone thru this without you!

 

BTW - Im day 3 cold turkey and all my muscles have locked up. Excruciating - can hardly walk. Back in spasm, pain throughout torso blah, blah. Is this common to withdrawal? (or do I have to face up to having fibromyalgia - )

[fishinghat]

Muscle problems are common with the withdrawal. Cramps, muscle aches and pains, restless leg, ....You might try some magnesium tablets. People going through high stress release more mg than normal. This low level are usually responsible also for the heart pounding, skip beats and irregular heart beats that sometimes occur. Standard dose is usually around 100 mg three times per day.