Furious Seasons

October 29, 2007

Depression Hurts And So Does Cymbalta

That's the view of Alicia Sparks, a blogger in West Virginia and a leader of the local NAMI affiliate, who has run into horrible problems trying to come off Cymbalta. She's written about it all quite well. I feel for her, since it's clear Cymbalta is turning out to be a very dicey drug that is also heavily-advertised. Lilly spent almost $700 million in ads on the anti-depressant in 2006.

Of course, I've been posting on this drug--which I've never taken--for about 18 months (here's a collection of Cymbalta posts), after stories began trickling forth from the patient world about the drug and especially reports of suicides and suicidal ideation linked to the drug. I wonder when the mainstream media will begin to pay attention to reported problems with this drug, because a drug that ought to generate about $2 billion in sales this year (its third full year on the market) that is having such problems is news in and of itself.

Posted by Philip Dawdy at October 29, 2007 11:51 AM

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Comments

I have been taking Cymbalta for alittle over four months, This product has not helped with any of my pain (especially headaches) I don't even feel like I am on an anti-depressent so I guess it stopped working. I am still depressed, sleeping for 14 hours at a clip and still in alot of pain. My psychiatrist even told me the Cymbalta may even be CAUSING my frequent and dibilitating headaches, that i am now seeing a neurologist about..I second the notion that the Cymbalta is a fraud and they commercials are false advertisement!!

----Still depressed and still in pain

--T

Posted by: Tina at November 5, 2007 09:52 PM

Tina,

Has the psychiatrist bothered to ask you why you are so unhappy, other than some purported chemical imbalance in your brain. It's likely there is a reason for your extreme unhappiness, that you are not crazy, and that when you work through that experience you will have less of a need to sleep all of the time.

Posted by: Sally at November 6, 2007 06:19 AM

Traci Johnson, age 19 hung herself in the Eli Lilly lab while trialing Cymbalta, as a healthy college student.

Her story is in one of the Cymbalta articles on this blog, and here is a link that gives a face with the name.

I feel it's imperative for consumers to understand that these medications are not always used for psychiatric purposes.

Cymbalta has crossed over for pain management, urinary incontinence ,and who knows what else.

Taper Safely: Traci Johnson.

Posted by: Stephany at November 26, 2007 06:39 PM