My 73 yr old mom weaned off of Cymbalta two weeks ago. She was diagnosed years ago with bipolar and two years ago with Alzheimers. She has been on Cymbalta, Lamictal and Namenda. I believe the meds are causing her memory loss and gastritis / ulcer so we are in the process of weaning her off of them. We did a two week taper off the Cymbalta. I believe she was on 40mg of Cymbalta daily for a few years. The first week we cut it in half and did 20 mg each morning. The next week we did 20 mg every other day and then stopped. Three days after her last Cymbalta we started her on Lithium Orotate. It is OTC organic low dose lithium supplement and it naturally increases serotonin. It seems to have mitigated all withdrawal symptoms. The only withdrawal she seemed to have was itchy feet which seemed to resolve after a few days. She also had a hemorrhoid that we treated with Horse Chestnut. Horse Chestnut resolved the hemorrhoid as well as the itching in one day! ) (It appears the itching feet and hemorrhoid were vascular)
I just wanted to share her experience. I am honestly shocked she didn't even have a headache. She used to have migraines in the past. Unfortunately her gastritis is still unresolved so I believe we have two more medications to get her off of before that resolves.
I just wanted to share this experience if it helps anyone. Lithium Orotate could possibly help with withdrawal symptoms as a natural replacement for serotonin without any side effects and it is not addictive and can be stopped anytime. Worth a try!
I'll definitely post an update it anything changes. So far, so good.