I have been medication free for 4 days with no adverse effects.

[Darwin333]

I hope all goes well for you. Cymbalta is some nasty crap to get off of, if the tapering doesn't work or if it gets to bad ask your doctor about switching you to something like Welbutrin and then tapering off of that (withdrawals are much easier).

I was on Cymbalta too, and Its amazing how bad the withdrawal symptoms are and how little the doc told me about them before I was "hooked". From my research, and I did a ton of it when I started losing my damned mind trying to quit it, very few people are aware of how hard it is to get off until they start going through the WDs.

No bullshit, I was addicted (Doc calls it "dependent" because I was taking them for legitimate reasons) to very high doses of opiates that I had been taking daily for roughly a year. I quit them cold turkey, same as the Cymbalta, and compared to the Cymbalta the opiate withdrawal were a friggen walk in the park. Yet they give out free samples of Cymbalta but people in serious life altering pain are often denied medication because they might get "addicted". But hey, if you get addicted to that other stuff (Cymbalta is often prescribed to people with chronic pain) that we really aren't sure how it works and has arguably worse withdrawal symptoms its no big deal.

Good luck bud.

 

[dpearson]

Dosage has a lot to do with it. The dosage used for depression can be pretty high. Currently I take 300mg of the XR . If I stop taking it suddenly by the 3rd day I'm nauseated, cold sweats with dizziness . If I wait 4 days the same symptoms continue but I also can't sleep, heart rate increases and it gets worse the longer I go without it. I found this out by accident when I was unable to get in touch with the doc for a refill and it ran out on a holiday weekend. I had to go to the emergency room to get some from a doc there. A couple hours after taking it again the symptoms went away.

They need to clearly label this stuff.

Lol I had to read your post a few times to figure out that the 300mg dosage was for Effexor, not Cymbalta.

I was thinking damn...the brain shocks from missing a 300mg Cymbalta dose would be a new kind of hell for me.

And yes, it is bullshit you had to go to an ER to get your meds. I don't think a lot of people realize that these meds are addicting.

Yet they give out free samples of Cymbalta

It's actually pretty sick that they do this.

For depression, patients may notice improvements in 1 to 4 weeks. Full antidepressant response may take 4 to 6 weeks. Patients may see improvement as early as 2 weeks in their anxious symptoms of GAD. In DNP and fibromyalgia trials, some patients experienced less pain as early as 1 week. Results may vary from person to person. http://www.cymbalta.com/learnaboutcymbalta/whattoexpect.jsp

So it takes at least a week to get an improvement -- if they respond to it at all. Yet the sample sizes only have enough for a week. I don't know how much Cymbalta you have to take to get addicted, but I bet you will be before it starts working.

If the pharmaceutical companies really do care about the people they're making their products for, they'll cut back on their marketing budget (that includes the sales reps that go directly to the doctors) and fund their R&D department properly. Maybe then we'll have some drugs that don't have side effects or withdraws that are worse than the conditions they're treating.

Thanks for the support all.

 

[XZeroII]

Good luck, but be careful. You won't be able to judge how well you're doing yourself so you NEED to get feedback from your family on how you're doing. It really depends on what your diagnosis is. If you were just taking it because of some depression you had awhile ago then you may be fine. But if you have a mental condition then you will start to slide back down a dark road after a couple of weeks.

You should NEVER attempt to go off of a prescribed medication without a doctor's supervision. If your one doc wasn't giving you what you wanted, you should just get a second oppinion from someone else.

 

[olds]

OP, couldn't you just have gone to a chiropractor?

 

[TridenT]

OP, couldn't you just have gone to a chiropractor?

:twisted::awe:

 

[WelshBloke]

Wall-of-fucking-text

You're giving up your ADHD meds at the moment arnt you?

 

[FeuerFrei]

I'm doing Effexor right now and after reading this thread I'm not looking forward to weaning myself off it.
Then there's teh Topamax as well ... >_<

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Anti-depressants are extremely common in the US. I large percentage of people take them. All I can say is I'm glad I quit taking them. I probably needed them when I started taking them in the early 90's, but I dealt with the issues that I had and it was time to move on.

Why? Med students have much higher rates of anxiety and depression than the rest of the population, but even here, out of the 200-odd people I know in my year and the year above, only a couple are taking anti-depression meds. I shudder to think of the incidence of US med students with anti-depressives.

 

[Colt45]

Why? Med students have much higher rates of anxiety and depression than the rest of the population, but even here, out of the 200-odd people I know in my year and the year above, only a couple are taking anti-depression meds. I shudder to think of the incidence of US med students with anti-depressives.

Plenty of folks don't like to mention their "mental disorder" to acquaintances. How do you know only a couple are taking them?

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Plenty of folks don't like to mention their "mental disorder" to acquaintances. How do you know only a couple are taking them?

You're right, but I would like to say that we spend a lot of time together and I don't see anybody popping pills.

I also found a study about Massachusetts Medical School; apparently of the students they surveyed with a depression screening test 18, 39, and 31&#37; (at years 1, 2, and 4 respectively) of those who responded to all 3 were classed as depressed. So I guess that's my answer.