Lightning in a bottle.
8 years ago my doctor put me on Cymbalta. I took it for six months, decided I didn't need the expense, and quit. Within 3 days I started experiencing what felt like a jolt of electricity from my brain to my toes whenever I moved or turned my head (about every 5 seconds). It wasn't painful, just surprising, distracting, relentless, and really, really annoying. Daily life became a novel and disturbing experience but I suspected it was from the Cymbalta so I looked it up. Turns out, people have been complaining about quitting Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) then experiencing "brain zaps" since the 1950s - there's whole forums online dedicated to their jeremiads. The official term is "Antidepressant Discontinuation Syndrome" and no one has discovered its cause but once it starts the only known solution is to restart the drug. Prevention involves a slow taper rather than quitting abruptly, like I did. The zaps are so unpleasant that Eli Lilly, the maker of Cymbalta, is currently under a class-action lawsuit for obfuscating their severity. My zaps were truly electrifying for six months, then slowly decreased over several years until today they only plague me when I first get out of bed or if I move suddenly when I'm tired. That dizzying "ZAP" is my new normal but my broken brain remains a constant reminder not to mess around with the chemicals in your gray matter - the results can be shocking.
Really? No more happy pills? I'll show you unhappy - light him up, boys!
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