I know this conversation is a bit old now but if you are still reading it, I am curious to know if your doctor prescribed or brought up other things as well for your nerve pain? There are so many other medications for nerve pain out there such as Gabapentin. (Even that has its own things to be cautious about. I think that is the case for every medication. But some are worse than others.) If it is the first medication, he/she brought up to help your nerve pain I am beyond perturbed about it.
I was put on Cymbalta or duloxetine a long time ago because I have Fibromyalgia. In 2004 that is what they automatically did when you were diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. I never could tell if it helped at all but since I needed an anti-depressant anyway because of depression and anxiety I decided to stay on it at 60mg a day. Here we are now after many years of taking it and I am still in so much pain I can barely function. Not just Fibromyalgia pain but nerve pain from having uncontrolled Diabetes for many years, and pain in my back from Degenerative Disk Disease and several protruding disks to name just a few of my chronic pain conditions. I can't imagine a doctor bringing up Cymbalta at first or at all really in any of these cases. I am actually amazed to read the reviews here on how much it helped other people. But it doesn't matter because an anti-depressant shouldn't be your first line of defense against chronic pain no matter what even though at the time I was put on it they thought that. I was hoping that by now all doctors not just some new that prescribing Cymbalta immediately for chronic pain was stupid.
I have been on anti-depressants nearly my whole life. If I can go back and somehow change that I would. They are not good. I am still on them because I can't get off without getting so sick that I choose just to stay on them. Like I said because I have depression too. And I have tried so many times in the past with many different ones to try and either decrease it or just get off it. They all talk about how dangerous opiates are, and they are, or at least can be, but what about the other medications they give such as anti-depressants that also have side effects and are addictive if they admit it or not. I know so many people that have had negative side effects from taking them as well as horrible side effects trying to get off them. And these people were not on them for very long. I have heard terrible stories within my own family. Not to mention what it does to unborn fetuses. They told me Zoloft was safe when I was pregnant with my youngest son but wanted me off other medications. So, I did as they said. He was born with his tricuspid valve being too narrow to efficiently pump blood through his heart, so they had to do surgery on his little newborn heart. I found out later all the different health problems and developmental issues in newborns whose mothers were taken SSRI's and other anti-depressant types when pregnant. These babies were being affected in many ways including heart valve issues. Needing the same heart valve surgery as my son did from the exact same anti-depressant. This even went to court with Scientists and Mothers proving the dangers of it. However, because I live in California it was dismissed due to the courts not allowing the evidence to come forward. But other states succeeded to my knowledge. So yeah, I wouldn't go there unless you have to.