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Cymbalta (Duloxetine)- anyone??

12K views 12 replies 10 participants last post by  Rymdis 
#1 ·
I haven't come across a similar forum, but has anyone had a good experience with cymbalta?

Ive been on cymbalta for about a year, depression has reduced but Ive gotten severely fatigued and panicky more recently. Just wondering if anyone else has had a good run with cymbalta and then had a severe drop in energy levels?
 
#2 ·
Cymbalta was terrible for me. I had the same problem with exhaustion and anxiety after taking it for several months. I also had some very scary experiences with withdraw and interactions with other medications. I became afraid of it and got off of it for good.

I don't want to scare you, everyone reacts to meds differently. But, if the fatigue and anxiety are interfering with your life you should talk to your doctor about it. You need to be your own advocate when dealing with psychiatrists.
 
#7 ·
Cymbalta has helped me with anxiety, but also caused fatigue like you were saying. It got better somewhat with time though. I was taking 40-60mg, but the side effects (which included weight gain and constipation), were enough to discontinue the medication later on.
 
#8 ·
yes, finding the right med is certainly difficult. ive been cut down from 120mg to 60mg, which was hell for the first few days. now im on a combo of 60mg cymbalta and 4mg edronax, which is supposed to help with the fatigue. ive been taking it for about a month, but am still really tired. my depression is worse, but i dont want to change meds again, as it is such a trial.

i will have to gather the motivation from somewhere to go to the psychiatrist though...
 
#9 ·
hmm the fatigue thing seems to be an issue with cymbalta which is odd cuz its meant to work for Chronic fatigue syndrome
As of January 11 2007, Eli Lilly is currently enrolling patients for double blind Phase II and Phase III trials of Cymbalta for the use of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) in conjunction with the University of Cincinnati.[44] CFS is characterized by severe disabling fatigue of at least six months' duration which cannot be fully explained by an identifiable medical condition. Eli Lilly has not publicly stated their hypothesis for use of Cymbalta for CFS.[wikipedia.com]
 
#10 ·
I had a similar experience with cymbalta although it did help me quite a good deal more than the vast majority of other meds I have tried.

If you haven't been down that road you probably want to try a straight SSRI. The SSNRI's like cymbalta and effexor tend to increase anxiety more.

You'll be damn lucky if you don't at least experience SOME side effect/s from any med so be aware that you need to balance the benefits vs the drawbacks. Good luck. :)
 
#11 ·
Cymbalta can be nasty on the liver, for this reason I would never take it. A lot of doctors don't even think it fills a useful role in the pharmacopoeia because there are medications that do what it does, do it better, and are at the same time less harmful.

By the way, just about every single instance of liver pathology has fatigue as a major symptom (itching is also common.) That's unlikely to be causing the fatigue, as I felt unbearably worn out on Effexor, but it might be worth getting a liver enzyme test done and if I was on Cymbalta I'd definitely be doing it routinely.
 
#12 ·
Cymbalta can be nasty on the liver, for this reason I would never take it. A lot of doctors don't even think it fills a useful role in the pharmacopoeia because there are medications that do what it does, do it better, and are at the same time less harmful.

By the way, just about every single instance of liver pathology has fatigue as a major symptom (itching it also common.) That's unlikely to be causing the fatigue, as I felt unbearably worn out on Effexor, but it might be worth getting a liver enzyme test done and if I was on Cymbalta I'd definitely be doing it routinely.
+1
 
#13 ·
Ive been on cymbalta for a while and at first it was pretty good. But it made me quite tired and i didnt had the enery to do anything. It did however remove some of my SA. But to get rid of the side-effects i swithed to Effexor. Now this is quite different. For me it didnt had the same punch for the SA but was greater in removing my OCD. After a while on this one i missed the effect of Cymbalta so i switched back. Had a pretty good ride for a while but then it starting to loose some of its punch. So i switched back once again to effexor, but the same thing happened with this one :( Not sure why this happened though.

/R
 
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