[caldwellrd]

Can anyone tell me if disorientation, feeling like you're heavily medicated, is a side effect of Cymbalta?

Thanks,

Karen Caldwell

[noobee]

From the cymbalta.com website:

What are the possible side effects of Cymbalta?
Like all medicines, Cymbalta can cause side effects.
In clinical studies, the most common side effect was nausea. For most people, the nausea was mild to moderate and usually went away within 1-2 weeks
Others included: dry mouth, constipation, decreased appetite, fatigue, sleepiness, and increased sweating. Most people were not bothered enough to stop taking Cymbalta.
In clinical studies, some people taking Cymbalta experienced an increase in blood pressure. Your doctor may periodically check your blood pressure.
This not a complete list of side effects. If you have questions or develop any side effects that concern you, talk to your doctor and/or pharmacist.

Info also available at http://cymbalta.drugs.com

[Abig10q]

Here are some things I noticed that may (or may not) be related to taking Cymbalta.
The nausea when I started taking it was more intense than I expected. I was actually surprised that I was able to keep from vomiting the first few days, which is good beyond the usual reasons, because I had not been informed of what to do as far as taking more or skipping it until the next days dose if I threw it up.
The first few weeks, I’d say that either it’s emotional healing effects hadn’t kicked in or if they did, they effected my so slightly as to be unnoticeable. However, I slowly began to notice that I was shaking more than I had after being on the Paxil and after weaning from that but before being on the Cymbalta. I also noticed during my first week on Cymbalta, that this drug had a very positive effect on the chronic pain I experience in my knees as I go up or down stairs, sit or rise from a sitting position. At one time, I had been given Vioxx to treat the apparent arthritis in my back (tests to confirm that arthritis was actually my condition were never performed) and I believe that the pain in my knees is also from arthritis (again, no tests were ever performed to confirm this). It is my opinion that Cymbalta worked on this type of pain- for me at least, FAR more effectively than the Vioxx ever did. For that reason alone, I remained on it for what I guess was around 2 months. BUT…I found during that couple of months that in addition to feeling a bit more anxious and shaky, I was crying longer and more often over upsetting things that were going on in my life, rather than less often and for less time, than I did on Paxil. I am not entirely sure if I’d say I cried more than I did after I went off the Paxil throughout most of the 2 months that I took Cymbalta, but certainly by the end of that period I noticed I was indeed a lot more weepy than I had been when I first started taking it. I was also thinking about dying more frequently at this point and realized that I had better start to wean off of this stuff or it might just give me that added push into a pine box. I could be wrong, but I think Cymbalta also made my blood pressure rise. I seemed to have less of an appetite when I first started (of course that may have just been the nausea) but once I got past the nausea, I found my appetite was pretty odd- barely wanting more than a couple of good size snacks one day and majorly pigging out the next. I don’t know if it was related to the increased sobbing, but I also experienced a few days of diarrhea and vomiting simultaneously as the intensity of my emotional upset worsened. Another thing I noticed was that I was having more trouble falling asleep as normal by the end of the 2 months I was on Cymbalta. Yet, I would suddenly get extremely sleepy in the middle of the day (5 to 8 hours after waking) and end up napping for anywhere from 3 to 6 hours when that sudden and powerful drowsiness hit, and then not be able to sleep at night until dawn. Within the first week after I began weaning off the Cymbalta, I was noticeably less tearful, less suicidal, but still experiencing the same amount of shakiness and still having trouble staying awake throughout my day and falling asleep at night. In fact, I found I wasn’t able to fall asleep until a couple of hours later each morning, thus effectively turning my normal sleep schedule a full 180 degrees, so that I was waking when the rest of the world was having dinner by the time I was 1 week past when I first began weaning. Also at 1 week after I began weaning, I was handling stressful situations with just a tiny bit less emotional upset, and my knees were still feeling pretty good. I experienced a couple of huge headaches during the week I started weaning from the Cymbalta, but I also got my period almost a week early (as I have nearly each month since this depression began…7 months ago) so I don’t know if these were actually weaning related.
It should be noted that I have learned from the internet things about taking this drug that my doctor did not specify for me, among them, that it must be taken with water, that it was FDA approved only for 9 weeks of use (guess I quit it just in time!) that it might cause an interaction or bleeding when taken with some of my usual over the counter drugs (aspirin, Ibuprofen, Tylenol, cough syrup) and that I should have spoken to a pharmacist before reaching for any of these.