Gabapentin Withdrawal Horror

Please visit www.survivingantidepressants.org

They will guide you through a safe withdrawal

i have been taking 600 gabapentin for 6 years. though i have had multiple problems whilst taking no doctor ever said these tablets could be the cause. My husband showed me an article about side effects and i had tge majority. Now im trying to stop tgem i have restless legs and arms and can hardly type but im down to 100 a day. i feel like a heroin addict my body is shaking my nerves are so sensitive my skin is crawling and i feel like i have flu. But i will stop these horruble tablets

First, I’m NOT responding directly to any one person. I just couldn’t figure out how to respond to the general topic. There are two things I would like to say. 1. Were we not all prescribed Gabapentin for conditions that were painful or troubling in one way or another? We didn’t just start talking Gabapentin for no reason, right? My insomnia had become intolerable. If I tapered off the drug I would have my insomnia right back and probably worse. 

2. In various posts I have read about withdrawing over a week, a month, or more. Somewhere I read doctors tapering people off it in a week. That is impossible. A short withdrawal is guaranteed to produce a nightmare of withdrawal symptoms such as most of you have been describing. All psychiatric, neurological, and most drugs need a LONG withdrawal. A MINIMUM OF ONE YEAR. Doctors never tell the truth about this. Not one that I have ever worked with has been honest about withdrawal from any drug. So how do you break it down into a year? If you are at a high does, you can probably request two prescriptions of different dosages that will allow you to go from 3600 mg to 3500 or 3400 mg. Do that for a month, then if you feel okay, go down another 100 or 200 mg. At the other end if you are on a low dose, the methods are breaking, cutting, crushing, or dissolving in club soda. One person here said he was licking the powder off his finger. That’s the best I read on this thread for getting down to a minuscule dose before stopping all together. A method for capsules is removing ONE bead and taking the rest. You can see how long all of these methods will take. I have withdrawn from more drugs than I want to count. If you go too fast, your withdrawal symptoms can become permanent. I would like to go from 600 mg to 300 mg and stay there. I tried just cutting it in half. After 3 nights I knew it would not work and I went back up to 600 mg. Then I started searching for withdrawal stories. Thanks to this thread being here, now I know what I’m dealing with. I need at least six months, maybe a year to get from 600 to 300. And it is going to be a total pain in the ass. I will probably break the pill in half and take 300 mg. Then dissolve or crush the other half and suspend in 2 oz of club soda. That works better than water. Then take 1 tsp and pour the rest down the drain. After one month take 2 tsp and pour the rest down the drain and so on. Thanks for being here. 

I’ve been taking 1800mg of the gabapentin for 4 months. Have it reduced to 900mg. Just reducing it by 300mg weekly. Feeling awful, very nauseous, today I could quite happily have a cry to myself and crawl in to my bed. GP never gave me any advice, just said to try and stop taking it!

HI to everyone, i am new here and i am scared of the withdrawals i am having from the gabbapentin, i just lowered to 100 mgs and i am feeling it i feel a nervous wreck. I had tried once before to get off this med and i had to go back on to do it more slowly and i am starting to feel it didnt do any good to go slowly. I also live alone with my 17yr old cat so going to rehab wouldnt work for me i have to take care of her.

I'm new to this group, but not new to trying to get off this drug. I have been on 1800 mg of this med for approximately 3+ years. At first, I thought this med was a miracle drug as it helped immensely with back pain and sciatica. I had done some research on it before starting it, but evidently felt at the time the long-term side effects might not be as bad as was claimed....ha! This past summer, I had gone through several days of hell getting off tramadol when it was put on the narcotics list. My PCP had told me that it was not habit-forming, so I had agreed to go on it under those conditions, as it did help with the pain in conjunction with the gabapentin. So, when I recently decided to try to get off gabapentin, I felt that it couldn't be any worse than withdrawing from tramadol. Was I mistaken! I began by reducing my dose 300mg a day for about a week or so. No withdrawals. So, I figured it would be okay to take 300 mg less afterwards for a time. I still had no withdrawal symptoms. So, last week, I decided to get rid of my morning dose altogether - 600 mg. At first, I felt fine...no withdrawal symptoms noticed. Then this past weekend, I began experiencing excessive itchiness/skin-crawling, crying spells, depression, anxiety that was constant, restlessness, fatigue, loss of appetite, and general feeling of being unwell, irritability.

I think that I may have withdrawn too quickly but just can't bring myself to go back to even 300 mg more each day. I hate this drug! 

Meantime, I had also been put on a very low dose of diazepam as a muscle relaxer years ago also which I was unable to get filled by my PCP in a timely manner so that I didn't have to be without it. Well, I was. For 3 days. So, I was reluctant to start back on it when it finally did get called into my pharmacy. 

I am SO sick and tired of being on these drugs that are liberally prescribed without any thought by PCPs that are too busy to look into the long-term effects of them beforehand! 

I am going to try to tough it out , if I can. It's a bit disconcerting when you read that you can experience repeated seizures that can be/are fatal, even if you never had a seizure disorder! I think that I may have just gone cold-turkey were it not for that! Then, there is the possibility of going through withdrawals for months! Ugh! Or experiencing long-term effects from being on this med in the first place!

Very discouraging!

 

Sorry if I'm interrupting, I know this discussion is very long already, And I don't know how many people will get to read this..

I found that seroquel (Quetiapine) and or Loxapine stopped or helped with almost all withdrawal symptoms, They is percribed like candy you simply have to ask for it.

Also the only thing that made my skin stop crawling was alcohol.

These prescriptions make you sleep and feel retarded, They are also muscle powerful relaxants.

I have been on and off Gabapentin/Pregababalin at least four times.. Every time I use them they had a hard to see hang over..

I only noticed how bad they are recently after getting off of a very heavy opiates addiction, I had no idea that these side effects were because of these prescriptions. 

getting off these alone made me want to grab at straws but I'd just make a hay stack..

I personal took around 300mg Quetiapine and 20mg Loxapine, and slept..

 

I'm sorry to ask this but ware do I post to ask people to use punctuation, So we can actually read what they are texting..?