Hi,
I'm a newbie to this forum and found it out of desperation for some answers as to why i've been feeling this miserable since I stopped taking Cymbalta.
I went on Cymbalta a year ago after trying multiple anti-depressants that weren't really helping. I have Hashimoto's disease (an auto-immune disease that attacks the thyroid) and one of the symptoms is depression and anxiety. Fast forward to early 2014, I was put on antidepressants to treat my depression and anxiety. After trying about 4-5 different medications and seeing 4 different doctors, I was put on Cymbalta and it was helpful but hell I would've tried anything else but Cymbalta had I known the withdrawal symptoms are this horrible.
The doctor started weaning me off to the medication in June. I went from 60 to 30 and was told to stay on the 30 dose for 3 months. After that, I would take that 30 dose every other day for 4 weeks and then every 2 days for 2 weeks and then I stopped. When I started the one day on, one day off, I started getting these horrible migraines; losing my appetite; I feel drowsy all the time; fatigue; insomnia and when I finally do sleep, I can barely get out of bed; sweating (i can go on and on)... Some of the symptoms I had overlap with symptoms I get when my thyroid is out of whack so I brushed it off as that.
My last pill was October 15, so it's almost been 3 weeks since I stopped taking it. I thought it was bad when I was weaning myself off of it but that was nothing compared to the withdrawal symptoms I'm going through now.
I want this poison out of my system and I wanna feel like myself again. The anger, the insomnia, the fatigue, the anxiety, the dizziness, the nausea, the nightmares when i do actually SLEEP, the lack of appetite, the constant stomach aches and nausea whether I eat or not, the unbearable night sweats, and the list goes on.. are becoming too unbearable that I barely function as a human being. And again, some of those withdrawal symptoms are the same as when my thyroid is out of whack but I had that checked a month ago and adjusted the dose accordingly and by now, my thyroid should be functioning properly. But just in case it isn't, I got a blood test done yesterday to see whether my thyroid is acting up again.
I feel helpless, I can't believe I was put on this and not even told about the withdrawal symptoms. I can't believe not a single one of the 4 drs i saw mentioned any of this. As fine as it made me feel when I was on it, I want nothing to do with this medication and never want to take another pill again.
I don't know what it is I need help with, I just feel absolutely miserable and as horrible as this sounds, I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one going through this because I feel so alone right now. I snap at any and everything/everyone for no reason (or shall I say over things that on my worse day, I wouldn't usually snap at). It's gotten to the point where I hide in my room all day and avoid all human contact in order not to lose it on anyone and i;m just furious at myself and the world right now. I'm not usually an angry person, far from it so this just feel like an out of body experience. I cry on and off all day, and I can't seem to be able to control anything right now.
I just feel helpless and I don't know what to do. What can I do to ease this misery? How long will it last for?
My general practitioner now wants to put me on something else and I don't want to go through that again because god knows what crappy withdrawal symptoms are going to come from that.
The worst part is, I have times during my day where I'm ready to talk and deal with all of this but that tends to be when I'm in my room alone and there's so much I can do to help myself. And when I try to talk to anyone about this, they just tell me, maybe I should just go back on cymbalta. But this is POISON and I don't wanna do that to myself again. I just want to go back to being a calm collected functioning person that doesn't snap over the stupidest things and doesn't hide in her room in order to avoid conflict or because I literally am not functioning properly.
Any advice, words of wisdom, or anything to ease this misery is greatly appreciated.
(Please excuse me if some of what I wrote doesn't make sense, I'm currently a weeping mess and can barely formulate proper sentences in my head - and sorry if this is long, some of this is probably me venting)