Hi folks. Thanks for operating this site. It's bloomin' enormous! I'm hoping someone can advise on how to differentiate between withdrawal symptoms and the return of an original mental health condition, and if anyone knows any average duration for symptoms after completion of a long taper. Also hoping people are not feeling too bad today...
Eleven days ago I reached zero duloxetine after an 18-month taper, following a couple of years on the drug here in Australia. I chose a very long taper (bead counting) because of major mental agitation caused by reducing the dose more quickly at a previous attempt. Nowadays I mostly use psychotherapy, mindfulness and exercise to manage anxiety so I had some optimism that I could survive as I dropped below the therapeutic dose (I was on 60mg). Nasty symptoms - feeling jittery, exaggerated startle response, mind going blank/stress responses to very minor stressors - started once I got to about 45mg and got worse again after I dropped below 30mg around five months ago. However I could still function at work and with study. The last few days/weeks have been far worse, however, and I've now had to take time off work with chronic headache, brain zaps, massive muscle tension, irritable bowel syndrome, nightmares, and even more frequent episodes of my mind going blank. The problem I have is that many of these symptoms are also symptoms of Generalized Anxiety Disorder, which I had a diagnosis of a few years ago. I'm not a big fan of the DSM but GAD is quite a useful way to describe my issues. So, how to differentiate between duloxetine withdrawal and return of GAD symptoms after 22 years on various antidepressants? Because of being off work I am starting to feel I can't justify being off meds, but I also don't want to give up after all this work if the symptoms are indeed withdrawals and there is some hope that they might remit reasonably soon. Hope this makes sense.
Tom