Posted by bleauberry on January 10, 2009, at 14:03:02
In reply to CYMBALTA, posted by DadsGirl on January 9, 2009, at 11:18:10
Three weeks is much too long in the shape you are in. Even 3 days would be too long. You gotta call the doctor's office and see what they can do.
You can reduce the dose. Here's how. Open up a capsule and dump the contents onto a plate. The contents consist of enteric coated beads that allow them to pass through the stomach acid and be absorbed in the intestines. The capsule itself is not enteric coated. It's just a plain gel cap and is meaningless.
With the beads on a plate you can then divide them into whatever size pile you want. For example if you roughly divided it into four eyeball-equal piles, then you could do 3 of those piles to get about 24ish milligrams instead of 30mg. Split the beads in two equal piles and you could get 15mg doses. If you want to be as exact as possible, 10 beads is approximately 1mg.
Put the beads on applesauce, yogurt, pudding, anything soft, and swallow without chewing so as not to break the enteric coating on the beads.
I had a similar reaction as you. I switched straight across to zoloft and within 24 hours I was calmed right down. I'm not at all saying zoloft is the answer, just that switching to anything else is probably going to be a relief. In the meantime, you can make your own custom sized doses.
For emergency calming help, go to the health food store or Whole Foods Mkt and get a tincture of Passion Flower and/or Valerian. Either one can cut the edge, both together even better. Passionflower is usually for anxiety and nervousness, while valerian is usually for sleep, but both work similar to xanax or klonopin. I have used them in emergencies and I can tell you they do indeed have the power you need to cut the edge to tolerable or minimal.
Your doc might want to add a benzo such as xanax, lorazepam, or klonopin, or maybe an neuroleptic like seroquel or zyprexa, with the hopes of calming you down to give cymbalta more time to work and more time for the side effects to go away. No guarantee they would work, but those are common things. I just hate to see adding any more meds than needed. Better would be to reduce the dose and then slowly work it back up, or to switch straight across to something else. Just my opinion though.
poster:bleauberry
thread:872959
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090104/msgs/873180.html