Hi i wanted to make an updated video on my thoughts on gabapentin that was the first video i ever made on youtube and it was basically me um pretty much praising gabapentin that it was a great medication for anxiety and um yeah i just want to basically retract all that in this video i know a lot of my subscribers struggle with anxiety too like me so so i
Have had anxiety most of my life at least since six years old um i’ve had social anxiety since at least six years old and um i’ve been to a psychiatrist um a few years ago and i was diagnosed with social anxiety and general anxiety disorder and i never really took medication i never did anything really for my anxiety until um like 2016 i believe it was no
2015. and um a friend of mine said that they take gabapentin and they really like liked it and said that oh it like cures their anxiety and i should get it because i’m just like struggling for no reason like i could be so much better if i would just take medication and so i was kind of desperate like i’m i was just like so tired of being anxious all the time
And like living most of my life with anxiety like that’s all i know like it must be nice to live with without anxiety or like everybody has like a little anxiety but to be like minimal like that just must be like amazing but anyway so i was like okay i’m determined i have to go to the doctor now and um get some kind of anxiety medication and try it out so
I did and um it was really easy to get actually um all i had to do was walk in there and say that i have anxiety and this was before i even went to the psychiatrist actually all i had to do was say that i have anxiety and then he um he’s like well there’s different kinds there’s antidepressants and there’s and then um he was like have you heard of any do you
Have any in mind and i said right away i was like gabapentin and he’s like well gabapentin he’s like that’s not an anxiety med and it’s not that’s the thing is it’s um gabapentin is actually for seizures and uh i think it’s the under nerve pain so um it has off label uses for anxiety so i think to my knowledge off label basically means that it hasn’t really
Been tested so they can’t like condone the use for that exactly but um he was like well if that’s what you want to use he had to like research a little bit because it was off label and then he’s like well if that’s what you want and then he wrote the prescription for me then i was on gabapentin for i think i was on it for a year and a half and so this i just
Want to talk about that in this video like i know the first few videos that i made on youtube i was like this is this is a really good medication it helps my anxiety and i was recommending it and everything but like i definitely do not recommend it anymore having been on it um just you know like it would give me this like buzz kind of a feeling and like
I would be like happy and laughing more than i usually do and it would make me like short-term memory memory loss like i would lose my keys a lot and stuff like that like brain fog is what i would say like i couldn’t focus i was just in a cloud all the time and the longer that i was on it the more i noticed like negative side effects from it like i just um
Like i said like i could not focus and like i just felt like like um just like a walking shell like not even a person i don’t know like my feelings were subdued i just i was like out of it i guess it’s the best way to describe it just like just like blah every day you know maybe it did help my anxiety some to like numb it but i was like what’s the trade-off like
The trade-off is that i just i my feelings were nubbed too is what it was like i didn’t feel like myself anymore and i noticed i like had this weird breathing thing where like i would stop breathing consciously and like so that’s the other thing i feel like i still have that problem and part of me wonders if that’s from gabapentin and part of me wonders if
That’s just from anxiety but i never had that problem before just having anxiety without medication but i’ve read like some like reddit and some forums online where people who have anxiety say that they have that problem like it’s pretty common to like when you’re focusing on things or you know like to forget to consciously breathe during certain periods of
The day it’s like it’s more so when you’re like concentrating on something or i don’t know it’s weird it’s not fun it’s uncomfortable and like i said i don’t know if that’s from gabapentin but i do know that that started happening when i was taking it so and there you can look online there’s a lot of youtube videos there’s a lot of forums people talking about
The negative effects of gabapentin and a lot of people have had it way worse on me like they absolutely had to get off it because it was like ruining their life and i just it was just in the end it was a negative experience and it made me not want to try any more medication for anxiety and um i i’ve only tried one other um that psychiatrist she um prescribed me
I think it was uh prozac yeah it was prozac i tried it for one day and it was horrible i had so many side effects i was dizzy nauseous like it was not good it was so bad that particular one makes you so you can’t sleep at night like you just cannot sleep so i was like i can’t do this because i have to work full-time and i can’t be dealing with side effects that’s
Like i don’t know how people like test out medication like that when they have to work full-time but yeah i and that made me i don’t know i’m just i’m not really like a medication proponent because i feel like it’s just a band-aid i feel like it doesn’t not to say that i don’t know just for me personally like i haven’t had good experience with it so and i still
Have anxiety every day and it sucks and last week i had two panic attacks i had on two days nights in a row and it sucks and like the only thing i can think is to exercise more like i could definitely do that i do feel like that’s the only thing that helps me i think that diet helps a little bit but there’s a lot of people who say that diet can completely cure
Anxiety it’ll just cure it and like i don’t believe that because i’ve eaten like really healthy and clean just to test that out and there was no difference my anxiety stayed the same so i maybe that works for some people but i don’t think that’s fair to claim that that will work for everybody and the other thing i want to say about gabapentin was um withdrawals
So i believe that most anxiety medications well a lot of medications in general but gabapentin for sure you are going to have withdrawals okay and um i had never experienced withdrawals before i didn’t know what to expect i was a little nervous i told my doctor like what should i do to come off of this and she right away she’s just like just stopped taking it
Next week because i had been tapering off but i hadn’t tapered off enough and i could like feel that i was like i don’t think i’ve been tapered off enough from this but she was like nope mondays just stop taking it since i really regretted that oh my god i shouldn’t have listened to her because i should one of my subscribers told me that um it would be wise to
When you’re tapering off to like you can split a pill in half and take half of it and i should have done that um i wasn’t even down to like one pill even when i was tapering like um so withdrawals this is what happened i i stopped taking it on monday and i went to work and i started getting the chills like that afternoon like real the worst chills of my life
Like i was like visibly shaking shivering and i had on like three shirts like a sweater on there and my winter coat and i was sitting there in the office shivering and like my co-workers were like amanda is warm in here and i was and then i i made it through that whole day and then i went home and then i was out the rest of the week like oh my god withdrawals
Are no joke and like i went through that whole thing by myself but i like don’t because like i’m a kind of like a prideful person like i can do everything on my own like i don’t need anybody to help me kind of a person but like don’t do that when you’re withdrawing from a medication because that’s dangerous and like you can die from that and i i felt i felt
Like i was dying like it’s it’s hard to describe what it felt like it just it felt like so horrible it’s it’s like being sick but it’s not it’s like i don’t even know how to describe it it was a little different level of being sick like i had fevers chills and i have this feeling like i want to like crawl out on my skin like i just want to like and then the
Feeling of like i just want to take it again so i just want to take gabapentin again so i feel better like take this feeling away from me you know like and i’ll tell you the only thing that helped me during that week i must have taken like 40 showers i took so many showers because that is like the only thing and i didn’t really even feel relieved it just helped
Like a little bit and it was like i didn’t know what to do because i just i felt so horrible and i never want to go through that again that’s why i don’t even want to try another medication because i don’t ever want to have to go through withdrawals again that’s that’s horrible if you want to um share your withdrawal experiences in the comments go ahead um yeah
You have to be like strong to get through that for real so yeah i do not recommend gabapentin for anxiety and i’m sure there’s a lot other medications out there that would be a lot better to try
Transcribed from video
Gabapentin for anxiety – do I still recommend? By Amanda *
