Posted by Gog on July 14, 2006, at 19:53:58
In reply to Re: Cymbalta withdrawal, posted by ShiningStar on July 14, 2006, at 8:41:20
Hang in there Star. Each day does get a little better and if it is too much to handle it seems like there were lots of methods people used to help them get through it. I felt sick to my stomach a lot but found if I was consistently getting myself food it really helped. Even if it was just sipping on juice. There were times when I really felt horrible and would realize I hadn't eaten for quite some time. Once I ate it would make a world of difference. But I know too that all of our bodies react in very different ways. I took Benadryl too...my allergies were acting up at the time so I thought I would hit two for one. I'm not sure if it helped or not. I also tried to drink lots of water and went to my acupuncturist (which helped for a little bit but then the symptoms seemed to come back pretty quickly.)
The responses of doctors are simply killing me! Before I went off I read a book called "The Antidepressant Solution" by Joseph Glenmullen (He is a psychiatrist and an instructor at Harvard.) The taper schedule he recommended for Cymbalta was 60mg, 40mg, 20mg, 10mg, 0. I showed my psychiatrist the book when I went in to see him and the first thing he did was flip to the taper schedule. That and the fact that he had me go from 60 to 30 to 0, told me he really didn't know what the taper schedule was in the first place. My psychiatrist was very apologetic because he hadn't heard, yet, of such severe withdrawal with Cymbalta. He said the two that were usually the worst were Paxil and Effexor. However, he did say that he had one patient on Prozac (which is usually the easiest to go off of due to it's long half life) and had to taper him using, eventually, the liquid form of it. (Which the book actually talked about.)
This author also describes this poor high school student who had to wean himself off of Effexor painfully slowly by counting the beads in the capsules. Just like many of the people in this posting have done. So at least there is one doctor out there who listens to his patients!
I'm glad I read and prepared like I did, but I still felt really blindsided by the side effects. The final drop to zero was markedly different from my first drop. Keep us posted as to how you are doing!
poster:Gog
thread:466069
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/wdrawl/20060627/msgs/667142.html