Short term low dosage Gabapentin still experiencing significant withdrawal symptoms

Hi Keith

I have been stopped since last Tuesday and was on 300mg gabapentin three times a day for just a week.

I still feel so nauseas with a terrible headache and feel as though I have been run over with aches everywhere. My back pain is obviously worse than ever following severe spinal surgery 3 months ago. My scars are also looking very red since taking Gabapentin.

i was on oramorph before which suited me fine but I did

I have a similar story. I've been on gabapentin for only a month now at 300mg 3x a day for anxiety and panic attacks. I had side affects of the meds like headaches, insane leg movement almost like i had to constantly keep tapping or moving my legs. i also started experiencing worsening anxiety so i decided i wanted to taper off. I'm on day 3 of tapering off, i'm doing 300mg 2x a day for 4 days, then i will taper to 300mg 1x a day for 4 days then stop the Gabapentin completely. I have already been experiencing withdraw side affects, I'm extremely emotional, heart feels heavy, and my depression has worsened. I am terrified because my battle with anxiety and depression has been a long and hard one and i am praying these symptoms will go away for me soon.

I have been taking 100mg of GP for 17 days..feeling of nausea, stomach pain, groggy all day..It feels like I'm already having withdrawals from it.. they also say if you too low a dose it can do this..I'm ready to get OFF OF IT. terrible feeling. they need to really educate people on this drug before it even goes out the door!!!

I have been taking 100mg of GP for 17 days..feeling of nausea, stomach pain, groggy all day..It feels like I'm already having withdrawals from it.. they also say if you too low a dose it can do this..I'm ready to get OFF OF IT. terrible feeling. they need to really educate people on this drug before it even goes out the door!!!

I am so glad I found this post. I was on Gaba for about a month and a half and I have only been off it for 3 days and its been terrible. I was prescribed it for chronic nerve pain and after being on it 3 weeks I became dangerously suicidal to the point I was considering it and planning it. I also was in a constant rage it was like someone removed my normal personality and replaced me with a monster.

I already struggle with life long treatment resistant depression and other mental health issues so as soon as I told my Doctor he wanted me off of it but encouraged me to do it slowly. I have worked down as slowly as I could and now I feel so hopeless, panic attacks, anxiety worse than I have had in years, total fear, stomach issues the first night I was on the toilet for hours. I also have lost my appetite. I was in such a bad way yesterday I said to my husband I wonder if I need to go into hospital. I have never experienced anything like this and I have been on just about every antidepressant and this is so horrible. I also cant focus and even typing this is difficult. Oh and my pain came back with a vengeance.

My GP who prescribed it is such a lovely person and sincerely cares about his patients I have known him for years and I will be telling him what this has done to me coming off of it. I was at 300mg three times a day at the highest. He recently prescribed me Cymbalta which I have refused to take after reading the horror stories on it.

I hope this gets better soon I am very scared and struggling so much. Thanks for sharing your stories to everyone here it does help to know this isnt in my head but this horrible medication withdrawal.

I hope you all are doing much better now.

I’ve been on a 900- of gabapentin for about 6 months for nerve pain It really didn’t help but I kept hoping it would I went up to 1200 for just a couple weeks. And then I decided to get off of it I foolishly did not taper And three days later I had severe gastric distress digestion was painful and I had heartburn. I had never had these symptoms before Had no idea it was gabapentin withdrawal So was checking with doctors Then my friend read about gabapentin withdrawal syndrome & I realized that might be it And I went back on gabapentin immediately. In a few hours I felt better and in about a week my stomach was back to normal. Then I decided to taper. I went down by one 300mg capsule 6 days ago and am now on 600mg After 2 days, I went back to having very painful digestion I’m taking digestive enzymes before i eat and have cut out fiber temporarily I am itchy, uncomfortable, anxious, irritable Now that I see that gabapentin affects the central nervous system, these symptoms make sense. i get sleepy during the day too it is genuinely hard to believe that what seemed like an incredibly mild drug is causing this much distress to go off of i want to go completely off it but will wait until I get adjusted to being on 600 mg then go down by 300mg My doc hasnt seen such an extreme reaction before but agrees it seems to clearly be the gabapentin I have gone off antidepressants and pain medication and both have been FAR easier. I have never shared about a medication on a public forum in my life but there is so little out there on this drug that I felt it was crucial

Hi Keith,

This will be a long reply, but I was glad to find your post here, specifically about having withdrawal symptoms after taking Gabapentin for less than a month. That brought me some reassurance and validation about my own withdrawal from this medication. Though my own setting circumstances for the withdrawal are very different from your own, a lot of the symptoms were the same, except I had one additional symptom, which is what brought me here. To begin, I will tell about how I got on the medication in the first place. Unfortunately, I obtained this medication from a friend instead of having it prescribed. A few years ago, I was in a bad car accident that left me with some kind of a nerve problem in my left shoulder that acts up when the weather gets cold. My friend thought this medicine would relieve the pain and tingling... and it did. I had no frame of reference for a proper dosage of this medication, as my friend had previously taken it for seizures, so I was taking a very high dose (1600mg to 3200mg) pretty regularly. I was taking the medication for three or four weeks and noticed that I started to get agitated and could not sleep at night until I took it. This troubled me greatly, as the whole medical community, it seems, agrees that there is no risk of physical dependence for Gabapentin. They are not only completely wrong, but also very reckless in that assumption, and in my opinion, are doing people a great disservice by not researching the physiological effects of this commonly prescribed medication. How is this FDA approved? Anyway, when I noticed the clear symptoms of physical dependence, I stopped taking the medication immediately, completely cold turkey. The impact of the withdrawal was so severe, I consider stopping this medication abruptly to be the worst decision I've ever made in my life. I still have waves of symptoms 9 months later. I can't remember how long it was before I started experiencing symptoms; it was within a week of stopping the medication, I started having what seemed like panic attacks while I was at work, but they came out of nowhere with no identifiable trigger. Along with this panic, I was having heart palpitations that lasted for up to an hour at a time. Within a few days, I was having very poor sleep, being jolted awake in a panic in the middle of the night and in the morning and that panic eventually stopped settling at all during the day. I was crawling out of my skin 24 hours a day and was having trouble regulating my body temperature. That's about when the muscle twitching started. All over my body, my muscles would twitch constantly, either in my legs, midsection, or arms and chest. I couldn't eat. I felt sick and severely bloated all the time, though I had lost 7 pounds in two weeks. I started experiencing visual disturbances out of the corner of my eye, light sensitivity, and an extremely profound sensitivity to sound. I would like to note that I started using the Headspace app for meditation every day and that really helped me at least get to work before I started panicking again. I also tried walking off my anxiety, but that only made me hyperventilate and caused the anxiety to get worse because I felt like I couldn't breathe. Periodically, I had a strange heaviness in my chest that lasted for a couple days and went away. I still have no way to explain this symptom. I eventually developed what I would describe as akin to restless leg syndrome, every day, all day, but it was worse at night. I sought medical attention for my symptoms, but at the time I hadn't made the connection that this was all a result of stopping the Gabapentin, so I didn't mention it. I was diagnosed as having gas and sent to my GP who prescribed a SSRI, Celexa, and Vistaril for anxiety which actually did help a bit, though I was so anxious it took weeks of (reluctantly) taking the Vistaril every other day for me to concede to making a commitment to the Celexa. My symptoms finally started to settle down after about two months, at the beginning of March, four days after starting Celexa 5mg (a sub-therapeutic dose because I refused to go up to 10mg). I was able to taper the Celexa by roughly half and stop with no real consequences by the end of June. By then, I had realized what really caused all of this trouble. All of the symptoms I listed still come and go in waves, 9 months later. The heart palpitations are most concerning to me because, although they are generally brief lasting only a beat or two, they occur frequently when the wave comes, and are accompanied by what appears to be a respiratory arrhythmia (not a life threatening condition, but still abnormal for me as an adult). When these symptoms crop up, the anxiety amps up as well and I find myself places like this desperately trying to reassure myself that what I'm experiencing is a protracted withdrawal from Gabapentin (similar to the kind of protracted withdrawal people can experience from benzodiazepines) and that eventually the symptoms will stop altogether. I wish there was more research available for the evidence of a withdrawal syndrome from this medication. I'm very grateful for the Internet and for people like you sharing their horrendous experiences, so I don't feel so alone and worried. Thanks, Keith.

I am having many of these same symptoms after taking 300 mg 3xs daily for about a month. was on 100mg for about 3 months before that.

I have been prescribed 100 mg 3xs daily to help ease back to a lower dose, but I think i is time to stop it altogether.

I have also had weird eye movements and pain behind my eyes, and today, the first day after I did not take 300 mg at night, I woke up very dizzy. I'm never dizzy!

I do hope these symptoms go away soon. They say gabapentin is well tolerated. Not so with me and I am on a relatively low dose.

I hope you are feeling better.

I am so happy to find this site. I thought I was losing my mind. My doctor prescribed a low dose of gabapentin (300 mg, 3x per day) for severe back pain. A few days after starting the Gabapentin I went through a nerve block procedure and the majority of the pain went away. I asked both my pain doc and PCP if it was wise to get off the Gabapentin because I had had a bad experience with it in the past. Both suggested I stay on it in case the pain returned. After only two weeks I asked my PCP if it would be a problem stopping it cold turkey, as I had only been on it for two weeks. I was told I could stop it without any difficulty, so I did. The nausea, anxiety and panic attacks started the next day. The only information I could find about Gabapentin withdrawal related to long term usage and abuse of the drug, until I found this website. I am so grateful to know that the nausea, anxiety and panic attacks affect people who have only been on gabapentin for a short time. I am not crazy, and these symptoms will pass in time. Gabapentin is not a harmless drug that simply addresses pain; it is a dangerous drug that can have severe side affects, even if only used for a short period of time.

Hi all

My husband was prescribed Gabapentin 100mg once to three times a day for back pain. He only took it once a day and was on it since August. His back pain had improved and so he stopped taking it, with his last dose being Friday (3rd). Then on Sunday (5th) he had 2 seizures (both happened while he was sleeping), 6 hours apart.

He has been in hospital since and they can find no medical reason for the seizures. MRI, CT scan, bloods etc. all clear. He has never had anything like this before.

The Dr did mention that coming off Gabapentin suddenly can cause such seizures, but he said that because my husband was on such a low dose he doesn't think it is the cause, but that it is a possibility.

However, I just find it too big a coincidence and I am hoping that this was really what caused the seizures. I was wondering if anyone else on such a relatively low dose has had a similar experience when coming off Gabapentin suddenly? We had no idea that this could happen, otherwise he definitely would have consulted the Dr first and tapered off.

Thanks in advance!

Elaina

i took Gabapentin 100 mg for 12 days only !

withdrawal- iam on day 4

• 1. Mild insomnia ( eyes want to rest, but brain active)
• Heart palpitations ( very concerning) but normal Ecg, echo and Treadmill stress test

2. Leg twitching in between
3. Slight dizziness
4. Jerk only while trying to sleep ( once or twice)
5. Soleus muscle cramp once or twice ( weird feeling)

   advise- Try to do breathing exercises ( alternate nostril) 2-3 rounds in a day.

   Go for walk early morning nearby park.

   i dont have park nearby, so i take stroll in my indian street.

   hope everyone will get better and fully restored soon !

im pretty much in the same boat. was on it for like a month and change, nothing super long term. 300 a day, then they raised to 600 out of nowhere, then slashed back to 300 again. been all downhill ever since. I've had my neurologist and primary both wanting to taper on different schedules and it's killing my body. once I got down to 200, it was too fast and I got horrible anxiety out of nowhere. tremors, sweats, nausea, stomach problems. mood is all over the place. hard to think straight. now they want me to stay at 300 daily to reset for awhile and go off way slower in future. how are you feeling now?