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Lyrica tapering


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I've been working at my Lyrica taper, going from 150 mg (75 x 2 day) and am now down to 25 mg. I had been doing fine on that daily, and attempted to try and do every other day at that dose. I made it about 36 hours before the nausea and anxiety hit, so I took another dose. I spoke to my pharmacist about compounding it into solution for helping with the taper, but she said since it was proprietary, she couldn't do that. She suggested that I just try and not think about the doses in terms of days, but hours and try to spread them out as it works for my body.

 

I've searched the board for others who've come off the drug, but haven't run into other replies about getting off of the last dose successfully (or at least with minimal side effects). Maybe the pain, anxiety, and nausea are just part of the process and will go away with time.

 

I've stocked up on all kinds of teas to help with the nausea, and my pharmacist recommended some chinese herbs that have helped cancer patients going through chemo (I recall they did help me when I was doing a rapid taper from hydrocodone).

 

Any thoughts or ideas on handling this last bit would be most appreciated.

 

Thanks,

Marie

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Good luck, I have to really search to find much on depakote tapering, still haven't found a whole lot.  I reinstated last time I tried it (I went a bit too fast).  The hardest part for me was discerning whether the wd effects were just really strong or if it was really screwing me up.  I decided to play it safe.  Now I wonder whether if I had stuck it out I would have come around.
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Hi Marie,

 

I am one of the "lucky" ones that has a neurontin taper awaiting me once I've recovered from my valium taper. I have been in contact with a member of another forum that is successfully tapering neurontin using a very slow titration method. That might be something to consider for your Lyrica taper.

 

Leslie

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Thanks for the thoughts and advice. I had been playing around with timing of dosages (every 40 hours, every 36 hours) for the last 25 mg pill. I've now decided to try water titrating, as Lyrica is supposedly water soluble. I diluted the 25 mg in 100 mL of water and removed 10 mL yesterday at about 11 am. Because the Lyrica is slightly sedating, I'm pushing my schedule to go into my bedtime meds, and will do the same amount tonight. I don't know how fast I'll be able to reduce the amount - maybe by 2 mL every day.

 

The nausea and anxiety are really horrible, and I'm in constant pain, but I've talked to my therapist, who has worked with a lot of people going through withdrawal from various meds, and reassured me these are all "normal" symptoms of going off an opioid related med. Lyrica is on the controlled substances list for this reason, but I don't think Neurontin is, so hopefully when you do your taper, you won't have the same horrible effects.

 

I'm not able to eat but more than a few crackers each day, and I've been taking some Chinese medicine recommended by my natural pharmacy that they suggest for patients going through chemo that have bad nausea. Also, lots of teas, and heat on my muscles.

 

I had to do a rapid taper from high-dose hydrocodone about 7 months ago, and it was much like this, feeling like every bone in your body is being broken over and over again, and the nausea is horrendous, but I also remember that eventually it got better and I became functional again. I'm just trying to keep that in mind, that this is temporary and I just have to go at my own pace and take care of myself and remember that in time, I will be well again.

 

Marie

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Good luck, I have to really search to find much on depakote tapering, still haven't found a whole lot.  I reinstated last time I tried it (I went a bit too fast).  The hardest part for me was discerning whether the wd effects were just really strong or if it was really screwing me up.  I decided to play it safe.  Now I wonder whether if I had stuck it out I would have come around.

 

I'm going to be tapering from Topamax soon. My neurologist said just to sort of halve the pills each week and then stop, but I imagine that because Depakote and Topamax are in a similar family, it isn't going to be as easy as that. What kind of wd effects did you experience and how did you pace your taper? I know the dosages are all different for the two meds. I'm on supposedly a relatively low dose of Topamax (100 mg), but I don't think it really matters, as it seems like the smaller the doses get as you go, the worse the wd effects become.

 

I spoke to my therapist today, who is knowledgable about addiction issues. She suggested to me that if coming off some of these medications was causing me horrendous pain and agony, a good goal to have would be just to reduce the dosages to a tolerable amount. In my case, I'm on a whole cocktail of things that when mixed together, supposedly could put you in a coma. Considering when I take them all, I still can hardly sleep, I don't know that "coma" is a risk, but I think my therapist's idea was a reasonable one. Sometimes our bodies, our external and internal systems, etc. make it such that working off that last dose isn't going to happen....now. But a goal of lowering some of these yucky drugs in our bodies can at least be preferable to just staying on higher doses or upping the doses.

 

So, please don't feel bad about your Depakote taper. Just know you did the best you could at the time, and you were probably doing it all on your own, as I'm finding, doctors are great about getting you right up high on a med, but don't know much about helping you get off it cleanly. I'll keep you posted on the Topamax taper when I start that (if I survive the Lyrica taper)!

 

Marie

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Thanks for the reply belle.  That was last year when I failed the depakote taper.  I then reinstated, klonopin too, after a successful klonopin taper.  It's taken me until now to get off klonopin again and ready to start another depakote taper.  I was struggling with klonopin tapering because the first time I got off .5mg in six weeks.  This last time I was only working with .25mg and I kept thinking since the dose was low I could cut by 25-50% and get off.  That approach lost me alot of time.  I went with 12% decreases and it was pretty smooth.  So i think the percentage makes a big difference, and that if a low dose affects a person then it will take time to rebalance after removing that low dose.  The dose I've been taking of depakote (500mg) is under therapeutic levels, it'll still be work to get off. 

Last year I did the depakote taper without much doc support and went too fast.  Tried to do it in about 5 weeks because I was feeling good.  Cut to 375mg, to 250mg, to 125mg, all without side effects.  So I was like okay I'm done with it.  After the first night, the next day I felt really depressed, which is not normal for me.  This is where I find it is hard to know whether to stick it out or keep going.  I stuck it out that night and woke up freezing and shaking really bad, and I'm not one to have this sort of stuff randomly.  I got up and realized that I was feeling like killing myself.  I have never felt like that before or since and know it was from depakote wd.  I got scared and was like f this **** so I reinstated at 375mg.  It was already too late, my brain crossed a threshold.  My sleep was messed up for at least a month, and that's what makes the anxiety rise.  So looking back I believe that if I had stayed at even 125mg for maybe a month, I would have been done with the meds, and saved myself another year of this crap.  This time my doc is supportive.  I am experimenting with going to 375mg now.

 

If you can handle that stuff, you are not going to go into a coma.  I work with people taking alot of psyc meds.  Some of them can take crazy amounts of stuff because of how they are wired.  I think you should, if you haven't, look for alternative therapies to help balance things out.  There are a bunch to try.  I know you are on alot of stuff but maybe you should wait a little for your body, before you work on topamax.  Those are some strong symptoms, I'm sorry. 

 

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I appreciate hearing your experiences with the Depakote - thanks for sharing what you went through. Anxiety isn't my main problem, but I've found it to be way increased just going off the Lyrica. My main issue is depression, and the benzos were prescribed to help with sleep b/c the depression medicine was causing chronic insomnia. The Topamax is for migraines, but since it is also used as a mood stabilizer, I am scared that tapering off it will have an effect on my mood in a negative way. Even when I was on other anti-depressants, I had suicidal thoughts and attempts, so I feel very scared about coming off of some of these meds and how they will affect my brain chemistry to a point that will be beyond my control.

 

I also don't have any doctor support right now, just various doctors telling me I need to stop taking different meds, so it's very confusing to know what meds to stop and in what sequence, and what the side effects are going to be, especially with my personal history, body chemistry, and ability to handle side effects.

 

One one hand, I am eager just to get things done quickly because I don't want to get into a "stable" state, just to have to be uncomfortable again, but as you say, it's probably better to let your body rest and equilibrate awhile before jumping into another taper that's likely to throw off your whole system drastically. And when I get around to the Topamax, I think approaching it like your Klonopin taper is a wise idea. Although my neurologist said just to stop once I hit 25 mg, I almost positive that will be a disaster, so I may be trying to cut the 100 mg pill into very tiny segments, or seeing if it can be water tapered somehow. I don't know how meds that aren't water soluble work for a water taper. I get concerned that cutting the pills so small at a certain point - I might just be getting filler since I'm sure it's not an even mixture of med/filler ratio.

 

I'm still hoping to get an appointment with a Pharm-D that can advise me on some of these areas. Still haven't heard back, but will keep trying.

 

Again, thanks so much for relaying your story and your advice. I feel very alone in this process and it helps to know there are others that are trying their best too and can pass on positive and helpful advice.

 

Marie

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I think some of these meds are just as bad as benzos and we need to look at them like that.  I agree that a slow taper might be the only way.  I take dilantin and I'm going to make an appointment with my doctor to try to get it in liquid form and do an extremely slow taper off of it.  I would rather have small seizures during the day than let this poison kill me.

 

Kian

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I'm starting to think some of these other meds are worse than benzos.  I never had suicidal thoughts from tapering off klonopin, but it happened with depakote before.  Maybe it's partially less discussed because fewer people try to go off them.  It's expected that once you take something like a stabilizer, you stay on it forever.

Belle, I have more about my current depakote taper.  I got out of the pdocs office feeling good to have some support, he even told me to go ahead and split the pills if I want even though he wrote me down for 375mg, he wasn't going to let me go short.  So even though I am patient, like anyone I want to get off the stuff quick as possible.  Sat. and Sun. I took 375mg, I've been at 500mg.  I felt fine but Monday I had a feeling i was going a bit fast, so I took 500mg again to try and catch up.  Last night I woke up with some burning/chills/heart anxiety.  Nothing I couldn't handle but way too strong of symptoms than Im comfortable with.  So I found out that a 25% decrease with depakote is too fast for me (ive been on 18 months now).  I'm going to now treat this much like the klonopin taper and go with 12% or less cuts.  Hopefully I haven't already thrown things off too much, I took 500mg again tonight. 

Assuming topamax is similar to depakote, same class, I would say definitely go really slow with it considering the mood stuff.  Go at your own pace.  I've learned to look at this long term.  I personally think that by going real slow a person will increase success rate and likely have less problems afterward.  Some of these c/t ers have some guts, or just don't give a ****, there's no way I'd even consider it, but I am also a more sensitive person.

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I'm starting to think some of these other meds are worse than benzos.  I never had suicidal thoughts from tapering off klonopin, but it happened with depakote before.  Maybe it's partially less discussed because fewer people try to go off them.  It's expected that once you take something like a stabilizer, you stay on it forever.

Belle, I have more about my current depakote taper.  I got out of the pdocs office feeling good to have some support, he even told me to go ahead and split the pills if I want even though he wrote me down for 375mg, he wasn't going to let me go short.  So even though I am patient, like anyone I want to get off the stuff quick as possible.  Sat. and Sun. I took 375mg, I've been at 500mg.  I felt fine but Monday I had a feeling i was going a bit fast, so I took 500mg again to try and catch up.  Last night I woke up with some burning/chills/heart anxiety.  Nothing I couldn't handle but way too strong of symptoms than Im comfortable with.  So I found out that a 25% decrease with depakote is too fast for me (ive been on 18 months now).  I'm going to now treat this much like the klonopin taper and go with 12% or less cuts.  Hopefully I haven't already thrown things off too much, I took 500mg again tonight. 

Assuming topamax is similar to depakote, same class, I would say definitely go really slow with it considering the mood stuff.  Go at your own pace.  I've learned to look at this long term.  I personally think that by going real slow a person will increase success rate and likely have less problems afterward.  Some of these c/t ers have some guts, or just don't give a ****, there's no way I'd even consider it, but I am also a more sensitive person.

 

I agree about other meds being as bad as benzos.  I also agree that we need to treat them as such and go SLOWWWWW.  I'm going to start my Dilantin taper hopefully tomorrow using the liquid suspension I was able to get prescribed from my PC doc.  We do have to accept that this will be very hard and will take a long time.  We just can't give up.  That is the main thing.  We must endure.  I realize I am not the only one going through this polydrug NIGHTMARE!  I just learned yesterday, AFTER 19 years of use, that Dilantin works almost the same as a BARBITURATE.  I had no idea that my seizure med was like a BARBITURATE!!!!!!!!!!  No wonder I had to reinstate K on month 7 while still on Dilantin!  This is absolutely nuts. 

 

Kian

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It's just horrible how these medicines work and how the tapering and w/d effects are so poorly understood. It seems like people like us, communicating together, are the guinea pigs for how to approach the problem of getting off these meds.

 

I'm not even starting to think about the Topamax yet, although with the knowledge about the Depakote, I suspect that jumping from 25 mg to 0 is not going to work. Topamax comes in a form called "Sprinkles" (which reminds me of my favorite cupcake place where I went to grad school in Dallas), but unfortunately Topamax Sprinkles is much less appealing. It is soluble in water at 9.8 mg/mL, whatever that means, so when I get to that point, I'm going to have to figure out how to do a water taper. Although I went to grad school for the sciences, I didn't do well in chemistry, so figuring out the math on these water tapers is confusing, especially with weird numbers like that.

 

I've been taking the Lyrica taper really slow. I re-stabilized myself at 25 mg (after trying to space the doses longer and longer periods) per day, and then started a water taper. I have been at 22.25 mg for three days, and will go do to 20 mg for three days, then 17.5 for three days, 15 for three days, 12.5 for three days, etc. This is what my GP suggested, and then thought I could stop when I hit 5 mg, although, I may need to even go lower than that. I've definitely noticed that since doing the water taper in these smaller increments, my side effects are not as severe. I still have higher anxiety, but am able to eat bland foods and keep them down (I actually lost 5 pounds in the two days that my system was out of whack from spacing out the doses of 25 mg because of the nausea, etc.). My anxiety begins to really come on around 3 pm and increase until I can take my night benzos. Although I would really like to increase my Klonopin right now just to help with the anxiety, I'm trying to focus on other activities to keep busy and take things as they come.

 

Because the Lyrica was for fibromyalgia, I am noticing increased pain every day in every part of my body, which I've been applying heat to. Unfortunately, my temperature fluctuates between being freezing cold and sweating profusely, so, this is a very strange drug to come off of.

 

I don't know how Lyrica acts on the brain, and I guess I shouldn't get too focused on what receptors are being triggered and upset by the tapering and slow w/d effects. I do know it definitely reminds me of tapering from opiates (very similar side effects). My GP said that a lot of people had a very difficult time coming off of Lyrica. My searches of other boards haven't really yielded results in terms of how others did it, what the side effects were, and how long the w/d lasted.

 

I'm glad we have a place to talk about our experiences with these other medications. Of course, most people are here for the benzo tapering and w/d (and that is in my plan too), but it does feel very helpless coming off of other things when there seems to be so little information and doctors don't really know the expected outcome on the individual patient.

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It's just horrible how these medicines work and how the tapering and w/d effects are so poorly understood. It seems like people like us, communicating together, are the guinea pigs for how to approach the problem of getting off these meds.

 

I'm not even starting to think about the Topamax yet, although with the knowledge about the Depakote, I suspect that jumping from 25 mg to 0 is not going to work. Topamax comes in a form called "Sprinkles" (which reminds me of my favorite cupcake place where I went to grad school in Dallas), but unfortunately Topamax Sprinkles is much less appealing. It is soluble in water at 9.8 mg/mL, whatever that means, so when I get to that point, I'm going to have to figure out how to do a water taper. Although I went to grad school for the sciences, I didn't do well in chemistry, so figuring out the math on these water tapers is confusing, especially with weird numbers like that.

 

I've been taking the Lyrica taper really slow. I re-stabilized myself at 25 mg (after trying to space the doses longer and longer periods) per day, and then started a water taper. I have been at 22.25 mg for three days, and will go do to 20 mg for three days, then 17.5 for three days, 15 for three days, 12.5 for three days, etc. This is what my GP suggested, and then thought I could stop when I hit 5 mg, although, I may need to even go lower than that. I've definitely noticed that since doing the water taper in these smaller increments, my side effects are not as severe. I still have higher anxiety, but am able to eat bland foods and keep them down (I actually lost 5 pounds in the two days that my system was out of whack from spacing out the doses of 25 mg because of the nausea, etc.). My anxiety begins to really come on around 3 pm and increase until I can take my night benzos. Although I would really like to increase my Klonopin right now just to help with the anxiety, I'm trying to focus on other activities to keep busy and take things as they come.

 

Because the Lyrica was for fibromyalgia, I am noticing increased pain every day in every part of my body, which I've been applying heat to. Unfortunately, my temperature fluctuates between being freezing cold and sweating profusely, so, this is a very strange drug to come off of.

 

I don't know how Lyrica acts on the brain, and I guess I shouldn't get too focused on what receptors are being triggered and upset by the tapering and slow w/d effects. I do know it definitely reminds me of tapering from opiates (very similar side effects). My GP said that a lot of people had a very difficult time coming off of Lyrica. My searches of other boards haven't really yielded results in terms of how others did it, what the side effects were, and how long the w/d lasted.

 

I'm glad we have a place to talk about our experiences with these other medications. Of course, most people are here for the benzo tapering and w/d (and that is in my plan too), but it does feel very helpless coming off of other things when there seems to be so little information and doctors don't really know the expected outcome on the individual patient.

 

So true.  I'm glad we can share our experiences.  It means so much to me.  Hang in there.

 

Kian

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Yeah well we gotta start somewhere with getting a knowledge base on this stuff.  I've been posting some of my experiences, hoping that someone can get something from them, and also maybe not make the same mistakes.

I'd guess that more doctors than not, do not have a great knowledge of getting off the drugs efficiently.  On top of that I think there is alot of pressure and propaganda put out by the drug companies.  And then there are likely many cases, such as me before, where a person attempts to go off medication, doesn't use proper methods, fails, and then the doc says "see, you need the medication".

Certainly, medication is probably the best route for some situations.  I've witnessed these too. 

I favor straight dose decreases instead of spacing.  It's worked for me.

Belle, if you're going to take the time to water titrate.  I wouldn't get so worried about messing it up.  Your breaking it down really small at that point, so just get as close as you can.

Don't feel helpless, trust that you are doing your best and your body is trying to heal.

 

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