Posted by Ellen04 on February 3, 2007, at 21:14:24
In reply to Cymbalta withdrawal, posted by Regina on March 3, 2005, at 16:37:18
Just wanted to share my experience going off cymbalta. I took it for about 6 mos. for fibromyalgia, had been consistently on some anti-depressant for about 10 yrs., orginally started for depression pre-fibro.
I went off the cymbalta sort of by accident. I had a bad case of flu and couldn't keep anything down for a several days, so I didn't take the cymbalta. As I started recovering from the flu, I realized I didn't feel any worse for not taking the cymbalta and in some ways better, so I thought I'd stay off it for a while more and see what happened.
Discontinuation symptoms happened, that's for sure. I felt the buzzy, electic shock feeling in my head for a week or so and a generally crappy feeling that went with it. There were about 2 days when I nearly took some more to stop the symptoms, but I went to sleep instead and felt better when I woke up. I wasn't working at the time, but if I had been, I'd certainly have had to call in sick. It wasn't pleasant, but I've certainly felt worse for longer with a bad flu. It took about a month for my digestive system to get back to normal.
But those symptoms all stopped. I feel no worse than I did on it, and it's nice not to have the side effect of sweating a lot. And about 6 weeks in, the depression hasn't returned either.
I don't for a minute doubt that some people have a harder time coming off it, just like some people have few or no problems, so I wanted to post as another example of how mileage will vary! I have an "advantage" in that fibromylagia has trained me to cope with feeling like crap without getting too upset about it, so I just rode it out like it was the flu.
poster:Ellen04
thread:466069
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/wdrawl/20061224/msgs/729477.html