I was on Gabapentin for back/leg pain. The doctor warned that it was very important to ramp up the dose gradually, and ramp down gradually. I followed the advice carefully and had no issues. But it was tempting to think "I'm okay now, I won't need to take more pills".

My doctor was awful and gave me no such warnings. I was only able to get off it through help from Reddit.

If you look up Gabapentin on Google, the top results will make you think its a Nqyuil-tier drug with mild side effects. But there are entire subreddits dedicated to it, and all of them filled with horror stories of people struggling with withdrawals.

Glad to be off it, but that one month of withdrawals was not fun. I’m as such hypersensitive to most medication and Gabapentin kind of broke me.

Not to minimize the risks, because they are very real and I’ve had my own adverse interactions with Gabapentin (not anything as bad as others), but one reason there are so many stories about it is that it is extremely heavily prescribed.

It is off label prescribed for everything from headaches to arthritis relief to anxiety. It has a complicated instruction set and as you mentioned some people are more sensitive to that than others (I’m on a fairly high dose and can skip a day with no major effects other than the symptoms it’s treating coming back).

One thing I don’t think we as a society don’t do well enough is explain how important dosing protocols are to people. Acetaminophen for instance is an extremely dangerous drug, yet most people take it without thought.

Google is only a mall nowadays.

When I need information I can trust, I go straight to Wikipedia. If it's high-impact, I also check references - Sci-Hub is a game-changer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabapentin#Withdrawal_and_depe...

Good on you for following his advice. An ex girlfriend of mine was on that stuff and ran out for a few days due to a fuckup at her pharmacy, and the abrupt stop caused a Grand Mal seizure which landed her in the hospital for two days. No previous history of epilepsy.

I was not told that you couldn't skip a dose or had to take it at the same time everyday. I had some family over and forgot to take my regular dose. Woke up at 5AM in the night with intense numbness all over my body, heart palpitations, an a feeling of dread. Legitimately thought I had a stroke.

Now I always wonder when I meet anyone who is acting "weird" or irrationally angry or irritable - how much of their behavior is caused by pharmaceuticals that they don't understand?

This is why I find videos on /r/publicfreakout and the like very hard to watch. It's not a nice feeling to gawk at somebody who is more likely than not under the influence of pharmacology - be it synthetic, or their brain's own neurochemistry.

A lot of doctors seem to be unaware of the dangers or don't take them seriously. Months later she met with another doctor for reasons unrelated to the seizure episode. The doctor wanted to take her off of Gabapentin (she was taking it on a permanent basis due to some chronic health issues) and told her to just go cold turkey. When asked if that was safe, the doctor said "Yeah, it's Gabapentin!", like there was obviously no issue.

I unfortunately met a lot of doctors through her that really opened my eyes to how many of them just don't give a fuck.

Yeah my doctor completely refused to acknolwedge that this stuff even had any withdrawals. Ascribed my symptoms to everything from heart issues to multiple sclerosis. Even though he knew I had zero symptoms before starting this medication, all my tests were clean, and I was on no medication at all.

At the very least, its ensured that I will never take any prescription medication without self-studying its side effects.

grow up. This is such a moronic comment and I hope at some point in the future you reach a level of maturity in your life where you'll understand why it is. someone opens up with a touching and personal story and you nitpick them with a trivial detail for no gain

I think the parent comment was misinterpreted, it sounds like they are highlighting that gabapentin is related to the neurotransmitter GABA (indeed it is a structural analogue). GABAergic drugs (benzos, alcohol) are notorious for causing horrendous and potentially lethal withdrawals.

To me, that comment reads as though it's in agreement with the GP post, although it could probably have benefited from some context for the vast majority of people who are unfamiliar with the nature of neurotransmitters.

When you understand how our chemistry, our diet & our environment influences our conscious self including past experiences you may have forgotten, you'll probably have a better understanding of why things occur. If you look at the Tryptophan pathway, SSRI's can be viewed like some sort of (SQL, XSS, Code) injection attack, influencing your chemistry and your emotions in other ways which may have given you a short term boost, but may not have addressed the underlying cause.

Monotherapy's are simple to use much like A/B testing, but time consuming, a type of resource burn for intelligence gathering, but its the best on offer for most.

Keeping a diary, paying attention to your diet, your life, identifying what you like and dont like, what you want to achieve can help but be mindful your chemistry will influence those thoughts. Think back to when you were a child and the things you wanted then and what you want now, they will be different because your chemistry has changed.

The medical profession recognise how chemistry influences our thoughts because SSRI's exist as have MAOI's as a first generation anti depressant, but their primary application as an anti depressant may not always be the intended purpose as the tryptophan pathway can highlight.

You see this with Gabapentin, nerve pain, could be a symptom of diabetic neuropathy. Only the Germans use alpha-lipoic acid as a medicine for diabetic neuropathy according to some online sources. The only sugar the immune system does not attack is starch. Manganese is also related to diabetes. Likewise too much B6 can cause auto immune diseases as can sodium (Th 17 cells) and highlight weaknesses in your body which need addressing, which could be your nervous system, the myelin sheath (histidine).

You dont say if you are male or female, but histidine is concentrated in the chest of males, religions have identified this as the missionary position for enjoyable exercise, which is why we don't eat Roosters, only feminised meat with the exception of beef in the West unless that's also come from dairy stock. From a meta data point of view, males strutting their chest are exhibiting their histidine levels in plain sight, just like grey hair can exhibit tyrosine deficiency and freckles on a kids face exhibits a healthy tyrosine balance amongst other things.

The body is a complex chemical reaction and whilst science attempts to understand it, its limited in a number of ways and shouldn't be seen as a panacea, when history and religion also has much metadata to offer.

For example diabetes, first documented 600 years bc in Persia (Iran), still not addressed in any meaningful way, a useful stealth weapon operating in plain sight, the sugar in a can of coke can reduce testosterone levels by 25% in teenage males as one example to control known threats in society. Religions also use their teachings to control populations, Ramadan, no food or fluids during daylight hours, lack of fluid increase blood sugar levels, increases the chances of followers developing pre-diabetes or diabetes, ergo males controlled as their intelligence increases.

Every system of control, beit religion, govt have stealth ways to control people and using health is just one of those ways which is why I say keep a diary and have an open mind. No one chemical does one thing in the body.

> If you look at the Tryptophan pathway, SSRI's can be viewed like some sort of (SQL, XSS, Code) injection attack, influencing your chemistry and your emotions in other ways which may have given you a short term boost, but may not have addressed the underlying cause.

They can actually address the underlying cause. Studies have shown that there may be an overdensity of post-synaptic 5-HT2A receptors in people with depression, and SSRIs causes a downregulation of those receptors.

There are similar systems in the body that can be targeted in this way - adding a GnRH agonist causes the body to downregulate GnRH receptors, making it paradoxically a good hormone blocker.

> They can actually address the underlying cause.

Unless the underlying cause is too much meat eating where some amino acids block or crowd out the uptake of tryptophan into the brain at the blood brain barrier, where carbs and tryptophan see the highest increase into the brain and CSF.

Vegetarians live longer than meat eaters.

Do you think Agrarian society's had a supermarket off to one side?

Besides, has any person prescribed SSRI's that you know of had their serum metabolites 5 HIAA measured?

Have they had a fMRI to back up your claims?

Has their blue light exposure and intensity been measured and quantified?

Was a simple blood test conducted to measure the markers related to GnRH to obtain meta data to enhance diagnosis?

Unless of course the state already has access to the meta data, like our supermarket purchases, besides its 24hr surveillance using common tech like smart phones, in order for a GP to make an accurate diagnosis and prescribe said SSRI's?

I was prescribed pregabalin, a similar drug to gabapentin, for nerve pain resulting in a bad accident and amazingly had no issues coming off. That said, I moved country during the time of the prescription and the doctor in the destination country was amazed that I was prescribed it, and recommended stopping as soon as possible.

Anyway, I'm sorry you've had such a hard time, hoping all is well.