Psycho-Babble Medication | about biological treatments | Framed
This thread | Show all | Post follow-up | Start new thread | List of forums | Search | FAQ

Re: Cymbalta (duloxetine) - report » ravenstorm

Posted by barbaracat on February 22, 2005, at 14:28:15

In reply to Re: Cymbalta (duloxetine) - report, posted by ravenstorm on February 21, 2005, at 20:42:27

Dear Raven,
Thanks so much for your support. I really need it right now as I'm going through one of the hardest times of my life.

No, I wasn't on SJW during Cymbalta. I'll give you some background I hope doesn't take too long. Probably will, because my heart is heavy right now. I was doing quite well on lithium and SJW and then some very stressful events occurred around finances and my husband's inability to find work. He's been very blocked in that area, going through his own stuff but it's been going on 5 years and my disability check (I have fibromyalgia on top of bipolar), is, of course, not enough. He's stuck, we've had some financial hits, and I'm terrified because it also triggers huge childhood survival issues. Nor should a sick woman be continually supporting a healthy man. Big issues that were too much for my minimalist meds support.

I began to get constant panic attacks and once again had a collapse physically and mentally and had to be hospitalized.

In the hospital, I was taken off lithium and put on depakote because my hypothyroidism was worse (lithium isn't good for the thyroid, as I'm sure you know and the hypothyroidism I'm sure made things worse). I was also put on seroquel. This eventually put me into a very lethargic depression and, without the lithium, I began to cycle into an irritable hypomania - the lovely mixed states.

I was already pretty wired as well as despondent when I saw my new psych nurse practitioner. I've been on every SSRI/SNRI in the book and utlimately didn't do well on them, but maybe this 'new Cymbalta' would be different and worth a try.

Mind you, I was not on lithium at this point, only high doses of seroquel (depakote was dropped, but the new thought in psych cicles is that antipsychotics can be used as mood stabilizers alone - wrong in my case).

The first few days of Cymbalta were interesting in that by now I was truly hypomanic and the Cymbalta was adding a weird but interesting psychdelic layer over it - colors, melting watches and so forth, which increased serotonin sometimes causes. But soon I began to have very uncomfortable physical symptoms of a claw-like pressure in my neck and throat and a contraction in my muscles, dizzyness, my pupils were dilated, my eyes staring, I was hearing and feeling electricity all around and in me, couldn't sleep and feeling very anxious.

I looked at this wild woman in the mirror and said 'screw this, I'm going back on lithium'. I dropped the Cymbalta and seroquel (never liked it) and went back on lithium and SJW. For a a few days I had wonderful peace and normalcy, a taste of what it must, and used to be like. But then the torrent of sadness hit, wrenching sobbing, scenes of every painful event of my life ripping through me and all I can do is sob. I can't get anything done. The house looks like a tornado came through and all I can do is stare at the piles and can make no sense of them. My husband is depressed as well and so we're quite a pair. I don't want to stop this grief from coming up, even though I wonder how many times I have to go through with processing it. Putting an antidepressant on what's coming up for me would be like trying to stop Niagra Falls with a cork.

But I can't deplete myself with the stress of what I'm going through. It's definitely PTSD and I don't need to live through that again - but the pain of it is finally coming up. So I need lithium for sure, I know that, I need a gentle AD and I need BENZOs, lots of them, to find some gentleness, some soothing.

I don't know if the combo of meds I was on, especially the Seroquel, interacting with the Cymbalta, or that fact I was not on lithium at the time and if I should give it a chance once the bipolar element is stable. But I look at the side effects, my past history with SSRI type meds and think 'do I want to go there?'. No, I want to do this another way that does not suppress whatever process I need to go through and yet does not exaggerate it either.

So thanks for letting me talk, Raven. I really really needed a friend right now. - Barbara


- > Barb--Did all of this happen just recently? I remember seeing your posts about lithium and SJW and how well you were doing not long ago.
>
> Were you taking SJW with the cymbalta? That might really screw things up for you. And I don't know what the half life of SJW is, so I don't know how long you would have to be off of it before starting the cymbalta.
>
> So sorry things went south for you. That sucks!
>
> Sorry I don't have info on cymbalta, I just wanted to offer my support.


Share
Tweet  

Thread

 

Post a new follow-up

Your message only Include above post


Notify the administrators

They will then review this post with the posting guidelines in mind.

To contact them about something other than this post, please use this form instead.

 

Start a new thread

 
Google
dr-bob.org www
Search options and examples
[amazon] for
in

This thread | Show all | Post follow-up | Start new thread | FAQ
Psycho-Babble Medication | Framed

poster:barbaracat thread:380308
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050222/msgs/461809.html