Posted by bleauberry on June 15, 2009, at 17:28:50
In reply to Re: cymbalta withdrawal, posted by cee on June 15, 2009, at 13:52:10
60mg to 30mg is a HUGE jump down. Think about it, that is a 50% move on your way to zero. A general rule of thumb is to reduce dose by 10% on a set schedule, say once a week, once every two weeks, whatever. Better yet is to let your own body tell you what is too fast. Go at a comfortable pace. It will be hard no matter what, but at least you can reduce the serious trauma of it. If you were to take it real slow in very tiny steps, such as 2mg steps at a time, over several months, it would probably be next to painless. But I realize you are in more of a hurry. Somewhere between the trauma you are experiencing now, and the super slow pace, is a compromise you can live with.
These meds are powerful. That withdrawal stuff tells you there is some scary stuff going on. No one knows what it is or if it is dangerous or damaging or whatever. For sure though, it can't be doing your system any good. That is serious stress and serious trauma.
You can make your own custom doses of cymbalta. It's easy and effective. Here's how.
Empty a capsule into a small bowl. You will have a bunch of small beads. Each one of them is enteric coated (the capsule is not). 10 beads is roughly 1mg. So to reduce from 30mg to say 25mg, you would remove 50 beads. Put the rest back into a gel cap (hard to do), or a much easier way is to sprinkle them on applesauce, yogurt, pudding, anything soft that you can swallow without chewing (you don't want to break the enteric coatings by chewing), and swallow.
When you get real low on dose, you might be counting out 50 beads for a dose of 5mg, 40 for 4mg, 30 for 3mg, 20 for 2mg, 10 for 1mg, 5 for half a milligram, and you are done.
The easiest way to count the tiny things is to just poke them with your finger, they will stick, and then you can count them on your finger as you knock them off with a knife or something.
poster:bleauberry
thread:901122
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090611/msgs/901159.html