Hello everyone, I am newly off Cymbalta (about 3 weeks) after tapering off from 90 mg/day over about 2 months. The withdrawal is quite the ride, yet I find the symptoms are just a more intense version of what I experienced periodically while on Cymbalta.
This forum is great, and I see from the posts I read so far that it is filled with intelligent, imaginative and humorous people, and that shines through even when you are having a bad day and babbling - maybe Cymbalta is a conspiracy to keep us from being too clever!
I was on Cymbalta for 6 years, on 60 mg/day for 5 years then last spring (2013) my psychiatrist increased the dose to 90 mg/day - things got worse, not better! Prior to Cymbalta I was on Celexa for about 5 years. I was prescribed Celexa (by my previous family MD) when I was going through a difficult time and for the first time in my life was finding it hard to cope. It seemed to help .... not sure though since I could have made better decisions than I did back then.
Once I moved past that difficult time and life was looking up, I found I was sleeping away my free time when I had been looking forward to a new chapter and had lots of things planned. My new family MD (I moved cities) switched me from Celexa to Cymbalta when I told her I was increasingly fatigued and unmotivated (and I used to be energetic and productive and did things for fun others considered "work"). She said my body must have become accustomed to the Celexa and it was not effective anymore, and Cymbalta was "a new and very good" drug. I read about Cymbalta at the time and the issues it caused many people - particularly the difficulty getting off it - and I was worried.
A year before I was prescribed Cymbalta I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism (something I suspected for several years but my docs were not taking seriously) and was prescribed levothyroxine. Ultrasounds indicated it was Hashimoto's Disease. No doubt you are all aware of the BS people with thyroid problems go through to get taken seriously - that has sites and forums of its own! I stopped taking levothyroxine a year ago (without my doc’s or endo’s knowledge) and have not felt better or worse. A blood test several months back showed my TSH, T4, T3 in “normal” range (T3 on the low end, but it always tested that way – I want to try desiccated pig thyroid at some point since that delivers T3).
Since I was on levothyroxine and this other "new and very good" 
drug, but feeling worse and worse and developing new symptoms that were affecting my life, I asked my doc to refer me to specialists for a thorough workup. Finally she did ..... she referred me to a psychiatrist. Umm, thanks. I told her that was fine, I will go, but I am still waiting for referrals to the other specialist as well. I got the referrals but it was a waste of time to see the other specialists. Nothing and no one stopped my continued decline. My health was affecting my job - and the assholes at work started to affect my health. I am now on Long Term Disability (LTD). To be fair, the psychiatrist was as helpful as he could be and he finally told me I needed to get away from the workplace or I will not recover. I also went to a naturopath who helped me a lot, but I could not afford to continue seeing him.
Back to Cymbalta. I expressed concerns about Cymbalta to my psychiatrist many times and that I suspected it was not doing me any good. He told me each time I should remain on it. Finally I told him I thought Cymbalta was causing the cognitive problems that were keeping me from making any progress, and since I was off work anyway, this was a good time to get off it to see if it was doing me good or harm.
So here I am, experiencing withdrawal but feeling hopeful. I have one year of LTD left and I intend to return to my job!
