Hi Jess, Yeah, I know what you mean about drugs. I honestly don’t really care at this point about how hard it will be to get off Gabapentin if it makes me feel normal (ish) - I am happy to take it as long as I have to!! I’m so tired of MAV. I’ve tried to figure out dietary triggers, the works, but nothing seems to help except medicine. I’ve had massages, etc. It all helps to release stress but doesn’t address the underlying over-excitablity of nerves…
The Gabapentin is the first drug in which I am able to function semi-normally and not have constant swaying sensation under fluorescent lights as well as increasing head pain and pressure. Topamax helped a little, nortriptyline more, but this one seems to be channeling electrical activity in the right places again.
There are some things still there in the background, so I know that the MAV is still there but it’s being majorly suppressed by Gabapentin. I am also only on the lowest dose (100mg 3x a day), so I hope that the drug will cause the nerves to chill out and my neurologist hopes I can get off the medicine
For now, I really need to get some sense of normal feeling back because I really need to continue my work.
The thing is, which I think is really important about how Gabapentin might not be working for you very well just yet, is that it needs to be given in 3 daily doses because it has such a short half-life–so if you are only taking 100mg at night, you’re not going to feel that during the day I don’t think as it wears off.
It has to be taken every 7-8 hours or something, so I take it around 8am, 2pm, and 10pm. I found that the first day it wasn’t that useful, I was a bit more dizzy in a different way, but then it started to sink in maybe because my blood level of it was getting stable on it…
I’d recommend trying to take it three times a day for at least a week and see if helps you feel any better. It’s made me a LOT less sensitive to lights and other stimuli even at this dose. I am trying to stay low so that as you say it won’t be too hard to come off of - I haven’t heard it’s addictive though, as long as you titrate downwards slowly just like you go up on it. I think at less than 300mg a day you can just quit it without titrating downward though.
I’m supposed to go horseback riding again tomorrow so I’ll have to see if will work in that type of situation - Hope so! Hope you feel better xx