Is Cymbalta addictive?

Did Cymbalta help create this problem?

• I lost my job this past Friday due to attendance issues. I have been going to the doctor every two to three weeks due to stomach issues, gallbladder, liver, and sleeping issues. I started taking Cymbalta for depression about four months ago and Ambien for sleeping. I had my gallbladder removed two months ago. My sleeping issues have increased over this time and I have even gone in for a sleep study with the doctor thinking that I may have sleep apnea. I was told today to immediately stop taking the Cymbalta and to see my doctor first thing in the morning after calling them yesterday asking about my sleep study results and to tell them that the sleeping issues have ultimately led to losing my job. I asked why I should stop, they told me that Cymbalta has side effects linked to sleeping disorders. They have been telling me to just up the dosage of the Ambien if I continued waking up in the middle of the night and now they are thinking that it is the Cymbalta. During my sleep study, the nurse told me that I was hardly in my REM cycle and that it took much longer than usual for my to get there. And also said that I had abnormal brain activity while I was dreaming which she thought was kicking me out of the REM cycle. I have gotten to the point where I am taking two to three Ambiens a night, one at bed time and the others in the middle of the night when I wake up wide awake and cannot fall back asleep. I am stuck here and I do not know what to do... I have lost a great job that I spent many overtime hours as a temp to get last September and when leaving my boss told me that I did amazing work, she just noticed over the past four months my attitude, workmanship, and tardiness got out of control. I understand that they have a business to run and cannot have that, but now that I found this out about the Cymbalta I am taking, I feel that by following the doctor's orders, I have set myself back two years in my career. Can someone please help???

• Answer:

  I'm not a doctor and I can't give medical advice. I can, however, offer you my opinion. I have taken ambien, xanax, valium, three different anti-depressants, and a few other nasty drugs. I have had a sleep study done. Cymbalta is a nasty drug, well known for causing insomnia. I think that is what started the whole thing - you started taking cymbalta and you had trouble sleeping, so they gave you ambien. Ambien suppresses REM sleep - you probably notice you don't dream much if at all on ambien, and that is why. Of course you had abnormal brain activity! You take ambien, your REM sleep is suppressed, and you wake up after a few hours, take more ambien, etc. It is a nasty cycle, it disrupts your normal sleep cycles, and the sleep you get is not very good or refreshing. Too many sleep "experts" don't understand this. The biggest problem with ambien is that you develop dependency - you can't sleep without it - and it takes the brain a very very long time to recover from this. If you quit ambien, you don't sleep at all for a while, and you sleep very poorly for a long time. When I quit ambien, I barely slept for four very long very hellish months. The sleep deprivation was severe, as I was only getting 1-3 hours of sleep at nights. It took four month for my brain to recover from the ambien so that I could start to have more normal sleep. I couldn't work or even drive a car for those four months. And after that, it still took well over a year to recover. Ambien is a drug from hell, and it takes a long long time to recover from taking it. My Sleep Dr. told me that for every week you take ambien, you can expect a week of withdrawals and recovery. So what to do? Talk to your doctor about quitting all of these drugs and give your brain time to heal and recover. Talk to your doctor about how to do it safely, it is dangerous to abruptly quit the drugs.