Getting Off Cymbalta

Cymbalta is without a doubt one of the worst medications I've had the horror of coming off of. It was prescribed while I was in the hospital during my last pancreas attack in 2007 to combat the pain I was using Percocet to manage. My hospitalization was an awful experience over all. Then a few days after starting Cymbalta, I felt this sticky sweat cover my body. It made me feel gross and clammy. I was in the hospital for six days and thought it was being there that was inducing that nasty slick. But upon returning home, I could not get away from it. I could not sleep without waking up drenched, constantly felt dirty, and was sweating out of my head profusely.

That one was really helpful for good hair days. One evening while at my aunt's house for dinner, I had to blow dry my scalp three separate times because my head was soaked. I looked like a menopausal, wet dog sitting at the dinner table fanning my head while everyone stared at thirty-one-year-old me. I was not aware this was a documented side-effect of Cymbalta until I was perusing through Prevention magazine one evening and started reading the fine print on the drug's advertisement. It was like a light bulb went off. So that's what all the sweating was about!

I suppose it helped with the pain, although there wasn't a marked difference and I was still taking narcotics daily to get through work and life. Desperate for anything to damper the throbbing, stabbing, aching fire that coursed through my body, I stayed on the drug for two years. Eventually my pain was managed with high doses of Lyrica. Thanks to my doctor's refusal to prescribe, I was off Percocet entirely.

But I gained serious weight while being on those drugs. More than fifty pounds. My complaints to my doctor fell on deaf ears. I was paranoid I was going to have another pancreas attack. He told me I would never get off Lyrica or Cymbalta. Instead, he instructed me to go on a medically supervised starvation diet and gave me a referral to a bariatric surgeon. Whoa! Are you kidding me? Get my stomach stapled because he had no idea how to treat my conditions and didn't want to prescribe narcotics? Sadly this was not the first time I realized "do no harm" was decidedly not at play for this chronic pain patient.

So I went on a holy quest to get off as many medications as possible. I blamed them for my weight gain and feared the consequences a lifetime of taking prescription drugs would have on my organs. Cymbalta was my first attack. I tapered down to half a dose. After about a month I stopped entirely. Oh, I really should've cut the half in half, but it was a name brand prescription and too expensive.

Well, shortly after stopping, I started feeling withdrawal symptoms I can only assume are like coming off some hard-core drug. Inside I felt like a telephone wire cut in half by lightening, whipping and snaking in the air, cracking electricity with every contact. It would course through my veins and cause me to twitch and tremble. I felt like an eel, a shorted wire, a wet plug, in a word ELECTRIC.

I was moody and grouchy and angry and frustrated and negative. Emotional garbage came pouring out as I became consumed with every injustice ever inflicted upon me, intentional or otherwise. I cut off contact with family and friends. The pure anger oozing out of me was so great, I couldn't differentiate what was real and what was a magnified perception from the withdrawal. I sat at my computer and wrote and wrote and wrote, getting it all out, feeling justified and victimized and wronged. I became extremely negative at work and borderline suicidal. I started seeing a therapist again because I was fearful of my actions without honest accountability to another person.

What I glean now from this experience is Cymbalta was masking psychosis from Lyrica, and once I was off Cymbalta the full experience of Lyrica took over. At this point I'd fired Dr. Stomach Staple and was with my new doctor at the Mayo Clinic. She upped Welbutrin to help my anxiety and quickly switched me off Lyrica and back on Neurontin (gabapentin). I began to feel better emotionally and mentally, but of course never anything easy, the pain came back. I started loosing weight, though. Guess I didn't need that bariatric surgeon after all.

I have tried darn near everything out there to manage this disease that is so unbelievably destructive to living a decent life. Drugs, diet, exercise, supplements, acupuncture, more drugs, stress management, lifestyle management, disability, physical therapy, more supplements then anyone could possibly imagine, working barely part-time, more drugs, rearranging my priorities and expectations, moving to a warm-weather climate, serious sleep management... Oh you name it, and I have tried it.

And my fibromyalgia is managed! I can work, love, laugh and savor a little. No, I'm not the woman I was before I got sick. But even though I had my physical health then, I am much more mentally and emotionally full now. I am clear in mind and conscious. I know what I need out of life, where to put my priorities to get it done, and what to just plain ignore because it will do nothing but suck me down. We are all different and each fibromyalgia patient must keep trying until they find the right combination of lifestyle and medical management to get their life back. But as for me, Cymbalta, we are broken up, never getting back together again, and I am sorry I ever met you!

Thanks for joining,

Leah

Originally published in August of 2010