holy cow the end of the taper is a nightmare.
Posted Sep 14, 2022, 7:31 PM UTC
63
Lol had two glasses of wine Saturday night and got the great idea to drop two beads on Sunday morning instead of the usual one bead. Now down to 5 beads daily!!!
Proceed to Monday and I was throwing up and my skin was on fire. That has subsided now and i'm just left with the usual anxiety spike.
I'm getting pretty motivated now, not much is gonna slow me down at this point.
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Well it's been done. Stopped my final dosage on Monday. So far nothing too crazy, just typical stepdown anxiety. I hope it goes away soon, so glad I won't have to do this anymore.
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Great job! Inspiring. I’m starting my taper down from 60mg on Sunday. 🙏 Planning to probably go down by 5% every 2 weeks until I get to 30mg, then will probably go down by 3% thereafter.
I once forgot to put my pills in halfway through my weekly pill dispenser and started noticing an electric feeling in my head one day. Once I realized what had happened, I was about 2.5 days late on my dose. It wasn’t too crazy though—just some mild zaps and really tired/mild headache. And good again once the dose started kicking in. So hopefully 5% works well for the first half. 😬
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How is the feeling now?
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Fine now - no withdrawal symptoms. Just on buspirone and it's about 5x better than cymbalta was for my anxiety.
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Okay I thought yo stopped completely to have no anti-depressants.
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I'm down to 1mg dosage in my almost.two year taper. 8 friggen microbeads per pill. I'm pulling out an additional bead every two weeks. Went from 9 beads to 8 beads on Monday. JFC, the anxiety is off the charts, nausea, skin is on fire. It's a nightmare. One microbead is the smallest unit I can taper by, roughly 0.1mg per bead.
My plasma levels must be dropping like a stone at the very end here because this is a nightmare. Insomnia is through the roof too. I hope it settles.out in a day or two.
Almost done...
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Down to 7 beads a day now...the latest step down was the most miserable yet but bad symptoms only lasted two days and I'm already feeling quite a bit better. While the anxiety has gotten more acute at the end I now have basically zero depression symptoms after a stepdown. I wonder if that's because at such a low dose the med isn't really doing anything for depression, just anxiety? Who knows.
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[deleted]
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Let's try this again....
3 beads, 0.38mg/day as of this morning. Anxiety has already spiked and I have some mild shakes. Getting so close to the end now!
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This latest step down to 3 beads has introduced a new withdrawal side effect. Terrible burning nerve pain down arms and legs and all up and down my spine. I'm used to the mild tingly skin feeling during a stepdown but this feels like a combination of me peeing down my legs and legs on fire. Arms aren't as bad but still bad. Hard to believe such a difference just based on two fewer microbeads.
Oddly enough I don't really have too much anxiety. It's mostly the physical pain. Must really be starving those receptors of the drug now.
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Down to a single bead now. Feeling an anxiety spike like is more typical. Also feel my nerves irritated like last time. Gonna spend a week or so at one bead before I jump off and am DONE.
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Well done !
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Good for you! You’re almost there. When I tapered off Cymbalta I held for a month when I got to the lower dosages. I think I started holding for a month instead of 2 weeks when I got to around 20-30 beads. It made my taper so much easier. Something you might want to consider.