Brief summary first:
After a year and a half of my severe depression not improving, despite the fact that I'd been on Cymbalta for nearly 2 years, maybe more - starting at 60mg the moving up to 120mg fairly soon thereafter, my doctor suggested I try Latuda, then after 10 days or so reduce my Cymbalta from 120 to 60mg since it didn't seem to be helping anyway. I noticed a remarkable difference the day I started Latuda and was excited to reduce my Cymbalta. However I had not done any research nor did my doctor mention how much fun was in store for me. So 10 days or so after starting Latuda, I cut back the Cymbalta by half. A day and a half later I felt like I was dying. I started researching Cymbalta withdrawal online and was surprised to see how common these symptoms were. So common that there's a name for it: Cymbalta Discontinuation Syndrome. Not that naming what was happening to me made things better, but at least I wasn't he only one going through hell. I ended up having to take 4 days off from work after suffering for nearly a week. Headaches and concentration issues were the main problem at the time. I called my doctor when I realized that I'd have to take time off to get through he withdrawals and asked if it'd be ok to just stop taking it completely. After all taking the jump from 120 to 60 made me think that it couldn't be much worse to just go off it altogether. I had taken the time off already, I figured I might as well just get it over with. He said no. He felt I needed some stability for awhile... Since it'd literally years since I'd been stable. Which, looking back I realize I was actually never stable, just numb.
I decided to go against his recommendation and stopped Cymbalta completely after a week or so of my first drop.no had already put my family through enough. I didn't want to do it again in a few months.
I am almost to a week of being free of Cymbalta and while the withdrawal symptoms are still happening the are not as bad. But I kind of feel like they are at a standstill now. I can't concentrate on work, my head feels like it's going to explode - I've found that ibuprofen actually takes he bite off the headaches a bit, and Benadryl seems to do something at night that helps, I guess, although I can't pinpoint what it's helping...
I seem to have gone through pretty much what everyone else has posted on here. I even notice the timeline for certain symptoms seems to be similar from one story to another. I am at the crying stage now. Two days ago was the suicidal stage - I even tested it a little to see i it was something I could really do - I have a nice scratch up my left wrist now but realize the whole time during my test that I didn't really want to kill myself, I was simply not in my right mind. The day before that episode I had a good day of rage, I wanted to kick things, throw things, scream - all of which I only visualized in my head, I did't need to test anything there, I knew I'd cause damage to tangible things. All he while I was having horrible headaches, slightly sick to my stomach, didn't want to eat, was dizzy and couldn't focus or concentrate, etc... So today is be crying and the rage and suicidal thoughts seem to have faded, but the constant symptoms don't seem to be going away yet. So like many others have asked, when will these start to go away?? I know everyone is different, but so many of the symptoms and timelines seem to fall inline with one another that I am hopeful there's at least some sort of common timeline for complete recovery of this head fog I am in. I can't afford to take more sick time - although maybe taking the short term disability route could apply here.
I hate this and want to be done. As much as I'd like to say "I want to feel normal" I know that regardless of he havoc Cymbalta is causing, I won't ever feel what I imagine other get to feel: normal. I'll gladly settle for my Cymbalta Discontinuation Syndrome to resolve though.
I'd love to get insight from others on 'fast tapers' of this drug and how you think it's affected the duration of your withdrawal symptoms or not. Maybe regardless of the method of ridding our bodies of this drug, the course is somewhat similar in symptoms and duration of the symptoms?
My eyes are blurry now, even though my crying stopped when I started writing this and in addition to this, my head is hurting quite a lot on the right side, towards the back - the pain slowly, or sometimes not so slowly, seems to move to different, isolated, parts of my head, and then sometimes my entire brain feels like it's unavoidably going to fail to function correctly. But long story short, I guess hat was my long winded way of closing this post.
If you got this far, thanks for reading my post!
I experienced this myself but I have managed to lose some of the weight so I can wear underwear again 
