Starting Gabapentin, any advice/comments?

Hi folks,

So my relapse responded very badly to Verapamil, which is strange as it helped me so much last time around. This time I literally almost fainted.

Went to the neuro today and he and I discussed all of the drugs I have trialed. He offered Gaba and I went for it. I like the fact that I am starting at a low, low dose of 100 mg per night (max being 3600 tho he has a patient at 4800!) and I can titrate up as slowly as I need to. He wants me to settle at 900 mg per day in divided doses.

What has your experience been? Any success stories or tips you can offer?

I am hoping this works for me, as this illness is attempting once again to steal my life away from me.

Thanks for anything you can offer :slight_smile:

Okay, so, here is some advice from me, to me:

Do not take Gabapentin and 5htp at the same time. It really sucks. :roll:

Okay so it’s been 8 days. I am at 100mg PM and AM. Feel just awful. Had to start drinking coffee as I will not make it out of the house otherwise. Not sure if that is a good idea in the long run tho.

Fingers and arms tingling badly today. Feel anxiety coming on too, worse than before.

Did I mention I hate this disease?

Was just interrupted right now as I am at work ( thank goodness I can work! ) but I took a minute to re read the Survival Guide, and have to say thank you again to Scott and to Burd for it, as it helped me to refocus.

I have been quite understandably going back to caffeine, as the Gaba has made me so sleepy it’s just nuts.

So what I am going to do is this:

-Cut out the caffeine. Again! :slight_smile:

-Remove the dietary triggers, particularly the main ones. I never really had much luck with this but I do remember discovering that bananas were a trigger and so I must have done something with my diet. I don’t think yogurt and tofu are triggers for me but who knows? The only way to really find out is to eliminate them along with all of the other triggers.

Oh man this means no avocados, right? Damn!! :smiley:

At the very least I can avoid the main triggers. I have already bought organic American cheese in place of the soy cheese and/or cheese sticks I was using for snacks. And I have discovered some frozen dinners that I can use for lunches, that appear to be trigger free. Some things do have a little cheese in them, but the amouts are so small that I will stick with them for a while and if I get no relief, then switch to something else.

Again, if anyone out there has had experience with Gaba that was helpful to them, I would love to hear from you.

Take care everyone,

Kathleen
As far as Gabapentin is concerned, I think I will go back down to 100mg at night only. Who cares if it takes a month to up my dose? I have a bottle with 600 pills it it. May as well give it a chance to work.

So here I go off the merry go round again. Stopping gabapentin, as I have too many side effects that I cannot tolerate.

I cannot go to work all glassy eyed, looking and talking and walking like I am stoned on something that should be really fun :smiley: yet is anything but!

Pissed and hurt and blue that nothing is working, and not just that but that I don’t seem to be able to tolerate anything. Super med sensitive I guess. Really glad for this board, as I have been able to look back and see why I stopped all of the other meds I tried. Sometimes I feel like a failure, but I remember those SEs and I feel I had good reason to stop. I can honestly say that, although I wasn’t on some of them for very long, I did have SEs that were either intolerable or potentially life threatening. Like not being able to breathe, for example…

The only thing I can think to try again is an SSRI, like Prozac, again. My complaints about that med have been mild compared to complaints about other meds, are all what I would call incidental SEs, and much easier to live with than this damn disease.

So it’s back to good ole’ Prozac and Valium. At least that’s what I am going to ask for.

:cry: