To keep his anxiety under control, Peter, a 35-year-old government employee, relied for nine years on a blue-and-white pill he popped every night before bed: Cymbalta, made by Eli Lilly & Co. When a generic version came on the market, offering the chance to save money, he switched.
It didn’t work out. The old symptoms of anxiety resurfaced, along with some entirely new ones: “Irritability, and also it kind of felt like a blanket over your brain the whole time.” It didn’t occur to Peter to blame the medicine — he assumed it was the same as what he’d been taking all along. But his doctor, who’d seen similar reactions before, thought otherwise, and prescribed a return to Cymbalta.
