Help - Gabapentin experience anyone?

Hello, As of about 2 weeks ago, I was switched from 0.15mg x 3 clonazepam to 3.0mg x 3 diazepam.  I still feel awful but am sleeping better.  An addiction doctor will be calling me and I suspect will want to put me onto gabapentin.  But, having read some of the information here about withdrawing from gabapentin, I am scared to even think about trying it.  I am suffering so much right now that I don't need to have another nightmare drug to come off of.

 

Any thoughts?

The moderators may move this post to the other drugs section. Also, they don’t really like people giving advice about what drugs to take. I will say that I am on it. I know I will have to taper it as well once I’m done with my Xanax taper. I take a small dose at night to help with sleep. It has caused me to gain weight. If you are sleeping better, you may want to avoid adding in another drug. Just a thought. 😊

The mods are happy to have people share their personal experiences.  That's how we all grow in our knowledge.

 

I added 300 mg gabapentin about a month after my c/t.  It helped a little with my sleep, and increased my overall baseline by about 10%.  Not groundbreaking, but a noticeable improvement.  I stopped it about 60 days later and had very little difficulty doing so.  300 mg is a fairly low dose from what I understand.

 

Gabapentin will mask benzo withdrawal symptoms to some degree.  That may sound good, but when a person stops taking gabapentin, it may be residual benzo withdrawal and not gabapentin withdrawal that faces them.  The withdrawal symptoms are pretty much identical so it's really difficult to know.

The mods are happy to have people share their personal experiences.  That's how we all grow in our knowledge.

 

I added 300 mg gabapentin about a month after my c/t.  It helped a little with my sleep, and increased my overall baseline by about 10%.  Not groundbreaking, but a noticeable improvement.  I stopped it about 60 days later and had very little difficulty doing so.  300 mg is a fairly low dose from what I understand.

 

Gabapentin will mask benzo withdrawal symptoms to some degree.  That may sound good, but when a person stops taking gabapentin, it may be residual benzo withdrawal and not gabapentin withdrawal that faces them.  The withdrawal symptoms are pretty much identical so it's really difficult to know.

I was told by a moderator not to recommend a drug. I had told someone that gapentin helped me.

The mods are happy to have people share their personal experiences.  That's how we all grow in our knowledge.

 

I added 300 mg gabapentin about a month after my c/t.  It helped a little with my sleep, and increased my overall baseline by about 10%.  Not groundbreaking, but a noticeable improvement.  I stopped it about 60 days later and had very little difficulty doing so.  300 mg is a fairly low dose from what I understand.

 

Gabapentin will mask benzo withdrawal symptoms to some degree.  That may sound good, but when a person stops taking gabapentin, it may be residual benzo withdrawal and not gabapentin withdrawal that faces them.  The withdrawal symptoms are pretty much identical so it's really difficult to know.

I was told by a moderator not to recommend a drug. I had told someone that gapentin helped me.

 

I don't want to sidetrack the thread.  I sent you a PM.

Everyone can do as they choose. Not medical advice, my personal experience: My first Ashton/Valium taper happened after I crashed and burned from Lyrica, gabapentin's wicked sister. I was on a low dose for only a couple of months and tapered as directed over 4 weeks. Had absolute Hell coming off it and for a month after. Wound up in ER. Found BB and thus Ashton.

 

Some people talk about how much it helped them. Good that worked out. My experience and that of other family members has been overwhelmingly bad. It gives psych and physical issues.

 

I use supplements (just a few core ones) to help get rid of the metabolites and high glutamate which helps the symptoms.  I did use propranolol very low dose for sudden BP spikes. This does not have any dependence issues or psych side effects.

 

Your call. I'm hesitant for anyone to add a drug that might cause new issues.

Thank you to all of you.  hh, I agree.  I am extremely hesitant to add another drug that *may* help with withdrawal symptoms of the benzo and end up with a dependence on that drug as well.

 

I know I’m not alone in saying that I would never be on medications period let alone look for another medication if not so desperate for relief from this suffering or a life threatening condition.

 

It would just be wonderful if there was an easy silver bullet.

It never helped my w/d s/x. I took it at a pretty high dose for another reason (neuropathic pain) and while it was somewhat beneficial for that, it was a bear to get off. It helps some people sleep, but it didn't for me. Also, it made me gain weight and feel loopy and dizzy and drunk. If you can avoid taking it, I wouldn't.

 

It's one of those drugs that seems to have no disease to treat. Docs are using it for way too many things, imo, under the "off label" pretense. They're now touting it as beneficial for "mood disorders". Uh huh. 

 

Just my 2 1/2 cents.

 

Katz

It never helped my w/d s/x. I took it at a pretty high dose for another reason (neuropathic pain) and while it was somewhat beneficial for that, it was a bear to get off. It helps some people sleep, but it didn't for me. Also, it made me gain weight and feel loopy and dizzy and drunk. If you can avoid taking it, I wouldn't.

 

It's one of those drugs that seems to have no disease to treat. Docs are using it for way too many things, imo, under the "off label" pretense. They're now touting it as beneficial for "mood disorders". Uh huh. 

 

Just my 2 1/2 cents.

 

Katz

When you say it was a bear to get off, how would you compare it to getting off benzos? The thought of another drug as bad as xanax chills me. It is helping me though which is the only reason I’m taking it for now.

No it wasn't as bad as benzos. But almost. I was really disappointed, because nothing prepared me for a gabapentin w/d although I had read on the internet that gaba has a w/d profile similar to benzos. Ha. How bad could it be, I thought? Well, it was similar enough that I got thoroughly sick and tired of feeling nauseous and loopy and headachey and probably rushed my taper. It was very aggravating to have to taper yet another drug that made me feel ill.  But, when I downed the last 50 mgs (I opened my 100 mg capsules at the end and poured half out) I was extremely relieved.

 

Not everyone has a bad w/d from gabapentin. Unfortunately, I did. And if I had paid attention to the info I read about the w/d profile, I would have been better prepared.

 

Hope you do okay. It's water soluble, so you could make a "home brew" and taper it via DLMT. I didn't . . . just dropped 100 mgs at a time.

 

Katz

Thank you to all of you.  hh, I agree.  I am extremely hesitant to add another drug that *may* help with withdrawal symptoms of the benzo and end up with a dependence on that drug as well.

 

I know I’m not alone in saying that I would never be on medications period let alone look for another medication if not so desperate for relief from this suffering or a life threatening condition.

 

It would just be wonderful if there was an easy silver bullet.

You could take it for relief on an occasional basis. If you took it twice per week, you wouldn't form a physical dependency, although I wouldn't do it that often because it would be jerking your CNS around and getting in the way of healing. But something like once every two weeks (something like 900mg taken in three separate doses spread across the day) just so you can have day where you don't feel wrecked with anxiety can be a valuable thing. Of course, this relies on you being able to resist the urge to take it more frequently.

 

Your medical provider is not going to tell you this is an option and a lot of the literature says that you need to build up gabapentin in the system for it to work. That is true for indications such as nerve pain, it apparently dose kick in for that when it builds up. I find however that it is the opposite in benzo withdrawal. It takes about 90 mins after dose to kick in but it does give very effective symptoms relief for several hours. Tolerance builds very rapidly and the symptom relief is less after taking it days in a row.

 

But then, that's just my experience. From what I read, out of all the commonly prescribed drugs, gabapentin seems to be one of the least predictable in terms of the effect that it can produce.

 

I think you're right to rule it out as a daily med. Some long term users call the brand version "Morontin" (its real name is Neurontin) because after a while of daily use, it leaves them unable to remember simple words and just generally feeling slow. People do recover from those symptoms but it's a sure sign that it's a dirty drug that is best avoided if you can.