Posted by deltmen on February 24, 2008, at 0:06:35
In reply to Re: Cymbalta withdrawal - Publicity » Troy Tempest, posted by moesje on October 15, 2007, at 14:19:36
1) This board needs an update. It seems it was made years ago...
I might suggest PHPBB: free, open source, and secure.I've been browsing Cymbalta withdrawal symptoms for months now with this forum appearing on numerous occasions, and Ive finally been able to quit about a week ago.
Ill share my experience first, and then for those who might be interested go into some finer points about this drug, life, physcatrists, and drug manufactures.
I am currently about a week into my withdrawal, and from what I've read I can expect it to go on for at least 3 to 6 weeks. I had been on 90mg for about a year and a few months. I first tried (months ago) to go off on a rapid taper over 2 weeks. I had not really experienced withdrawal symptoms like this before. This is an extremely dangerous medication as far as I am concerned. After experiencing first hand the intense and sickening withdrawal side effects mentioned in so many of these posts about Cymbalta Withdrawal, I consulted my physiatrist again and agreed to go on a much more shallow taper. I seemed to be stable at 60mg after this initial taper, and so I began a long and arduous schedule involving a prescription of 20mgs. I went from 60 to 50 to 40 to 30 to 20 in six weeks. During this time I also went briefly back on wellbutrin (to quit smoking). I had been on wellbutrin before as an anti depression and had noticed first hand the smoking cessation side effect that it has. I successfully quit smoking and quit wellbutrin (it gave me severe anger issues, an extreme and unpleasant side effect of taking the drug that I did not have while taking Zoloft as well). I had been smoke free for about a 2 weeks when the timeline for my Cymbalta taper had come to the end. I attempted to quit at 20mg, and had the horrible side effects return, and after consulting with my phys once again I began another taper period. 20 mg to 10mg to 5 mg by splitting the 20mg caps by hand and pouring out however many dots I estimated for my dose.. One can do the applesauce thing as well. So for 1 week I went back to 20mg to stabilize, then for 2 weeks I poured out half the cap, and for another 2 weeks I discarded a good amount (leaving about 5mg for a dose). After two failed attempts, over 10 weeks, I was finally quit this at 5mg. While I had the side effects they were diminished, but still very real.
The first two days I was ok (in fact I was kind of hyper manic: I actually organized my entire possessions, changed my diet, and began an exercise program.) The third day I began to have extreme dizziness, mood swings, and faintness when standing. From day 3 to day 7 (now) Ive had a persistent dizzy spell when moving or standing still, looking left or right, and a general flu like sickness feeling (THAT DOESNT GO AWAY). Today I actually had a 4 hour period where I had extremely low energy (similar in my experience to a hypoglycemic reaction).
I would like to thank all those who have shared on this forum and elsewhere their experiences with this drug, it has helped me finally rid myself of it. To those searching this forum and suffering from the withdrawal side effects I urge you to
1) TAPER SLOWLY, take your time. Take 1 4 weeks between mg switches. DO NOT do the every other day thing, this is not tapering and is bad for you. DO feel free to open a capsule and swallow parts the white dots with milk, applesauce, whatever, if you have to get a lower dose than 20mg.
2) Do not despair. You will have side effects if you find your body chemistry is prone to the scary and sickening withdrawal side effects of Cymbalta.
3) Try to exercise when you are feeling down or flu like, I have found this can help. Drink water. It is not actually the flu that makes you feel bad, it is this drug. Exercise through the bad feeling, the chemicals you release through physical activity will help your body regain normalcy through natural healthy means.
4) Do take it easy when under Cymbalta withdraw as if you were actually sick with the flu or Cold (not just feeling sick). Over-stimulation can happen a lot easier and cause a lot more discomfort than you are used to. The drug has altered your body, and you are altering it back, take it easy on yourself and your body.
5) Keep a positive attitude, an open mind, and know that you are not alone in this struggle.Keep in mind I am NO DOCTOR, I am sharing what has helped me and what I have read has helped others. But you may also find, as I have, that physiatrists are baffling ignorant to the withdrawal symptoms of this drug.
By the way, the doctor that prescribed this for me I now realize was a complete (censored explicative(s) here), it was no wonder he was not covered by my medical insurance (yeah I paid out of pocket)
Onto crazed ravings
I found a site somewhere out there in internet world that expressed the anger, frustration, and general sickness I felt about this drug. These are blogs about Cymbalta.
http://www.whatwinnersdo.com/severe-cymbalta-withdrawal-symptoms/
This is my favorite from thebipolarview.wordpress.com:
http://thebipolarview.wordpress.com/2007/04/15/cymbalta-sucks-*ss-eli-lilly-executives-are-*ss*s/If these addresses do not work for whatever reason (if you are searching this forum in 2015 and find the addresses are outdated and 404) go to google.com and type in Cymbalta withdrawal sucks, you may find something out there.
Now. I am very, very, very, very, very, very pissed off after this experience. Thankfully it has made me stronger, and more informed as a patient, of which I should have been in the first place. I am off all antidepressant medications after 5 years of error I would say trial and error but in reality these medications are (in my opinion) just a giant mistake.
I have read that Eli Lilly sells some of their drugs to phys docs making them sign agreements that the doctors will not go over the withdrawal side effects with their patients and other bullshippot like that. Whether this is true or not, I dont care. I know from my experience, and many others I have found online, (and of course the dead who do not speak go ahead and Google Cymbalta test suicide, look for a story about a college woman under quick withdrawal) anyways from my experience I know that the doc that put me on this shet didnt know, or WAS NOT TELLING, about the social-political mud that surrounds this medication, or the withdrawal side effects. The doctor I quit this stuff with did not know about the elongated taper that is needed for some when coming off this drug. There is something very, very, wrong with this. Doctors prescribing medication they know little about.
I am surprised there has not been a class action lawsuit. I assume any hint of such a thing has been squashed by the money behind pharmaceuticals and their law firms. But Im mad: at the system, psychiatrists in general, pharmaceutical companies, and the government over this issue. Im not the only one.
If I was Eli Lilly, a bad Physiatrist, or a corrupt government agency that was meant to protect people, especially depressed or pained people at risk, from bad Physiatrists or Pharmaceutical companies, if I was any of those things: I would pray to the gods, (god) that a series of law suits held me responsible legally binding. I would pray that the effort I didnt spend making sure my drug or drug recommendation was a good one, would have been spent defending myself against those I harmed, and that that effort (call this Karma) would have been used up until nothing was left except a memory of what once was. I would pray for forgiveness from those I harmed because if that did not happen, an agony far worse would await me. This agony would not be monitored by the fines and jail times from a court of law. This agony would be from the billions of lives I harmed crying for justice in a world where no justice was given.
Of course Im still withdrawing from their drugs at the moment. All this can simply be considered an insane ranting by a poor anonymous internet ex drug junkie. But if Karma does exist, I hope we all get ours.
poster:deltmen
thread:466069
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/wdrawl/20080220/msgs/814355.html