Duloxetine advice please.

[Tish]

I've suffered from anxiety for a long time now and have tried to avoid medication after having bad experiences with it in the past.
Unfortunately I started with some horrible physical symptoms that appeared to be MS. I don't suffer with health anxiety but the 6 month wait to see a neurologist was horrible and in the meantime I diagnosed myself with fibromyalgia. The specialist put my mind at rest regarding MS and said that psychiatrists now believe that fibro is over diagnosed.
He thinks my peripheral neuropathy symptoms are a result of trauma and it's 'my body attacking itself'. He advised me to see my GP to prescribe Duloxetine.
I've googled reviews for it and read what I can about it here on NMP.
It seems that people either love it or hate it!
I've decided to try it for myself BUT I have a big wedding to go to end of Nov when my son gets married. My dilemma is whether to wait until after the wedding (7 weeks away) or start taking it now. It could greatly reduce my symptoms OR make me more of a nervous wreck.
Any advice please from anyone that uses Duloxetine?

[KK77]

Tried this once but it made me violently sick. Have to make sure you take it with food to control nausea. But if fibromyalgia/chronic pain is your main concern perhaps pregabalin is an option? It has helped me with muscle injury/chronic pain and GAD - more so than any other painkiller/med.

Good luck with it.

[Tish]

Thanks for that KK. The doc told me duloxetine would be good for anxiety AND muscle pain but I'll look into pregabalin before I take anything.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Hi Tish,

It might be worth having a chat with ncncfcfan who has a recent thread on the Depression board as he has CFS/ME and has been taking this but having problems with it so has been prescribed another medication to work alongside it. This might be very relevant to your situation.

I've been on Duloxetine for a few years now and to be honest, I'm not sure whether its better than the Citalopram I was on before I relapsed. I have found that things are different, but whether they are better, I'm not sure. I think they probably are because my relapse was worse.

The problem with Duloxetine can be starting on them because of the side effects. For GAD the leaflet says to start at 30mg as opposed to depression which starts at the standard 60mg dose. I wondered why this was and I found out when I made the increase to 60mg which gave me the worst 8-10 days of my life. I think going straight onto the 60mg with GAD might be very detrimental hence having to taper on with this SNRI. The 30mg wasn't too bad, it was mostly the first couple of days when I would experience nausea when I took it but after that it was easier and the nausea faded away plus I even had better days within the first 2 weeks which is unusual for antidepressants.

So, I think if you are going to do this, don't do it too close to the wedding. If you started now, you can go up to the 60mg (if thats what your GP is going to do) and have enough time to assess it and hopefully see any side effects disappear before the wedding. Just be prepared that, as with any antidepressant, you could have some difficulty going onto it and to be prepred that you may need to take it easy at certain times (I'm thinking you would normally be busy with wedding preparation).

[Tish]

Thanks Terry, that's really useful advice. I've collected my pills, 30mg, and been very tempted to take them due to a lot of pain recently, but having read that, think I'll hang on until after the wedding. I don't want anything to spoil the big day. It's been a dilemma as I suffer badly with social anxiety too and if Duloxetine worked well, it could be a Godsend. I just daren't take that risk.