I have used prescribed gabapentin (Neurontin) for a few years to control post-herpetic nerve pain from multiple bouts of shingles on my right sciatic nerve. Two weeks ago I stopped taking it, thinking that because my dose was low, the withdrawal wouldn’t be bad. I was wrong.
Hey guys it’s linda and i just wanted to share a quick story with you about something that i’m going through and recently have gone through in relationship to a medication that i’ve been taking for a number of years for my chronic neuralgia or nerve pain due to having had shingles on my right side addict nerve four times the main drug that they give you for
Shingles is called gabapentin a brand name is neurontin and i was always told if that gabapentin was relatively safe especially at the dose that i took it ad which was maybe 300 between 300 and 1,800 milligrams a day depending on the severity of my pain and how i was feeling that that dose was pretty safe that there weren’t a lot of addiction issues and that i
Really didn’t have to worry about it so for about the last five years because i’ve been in pain i’ve been taking the neurontin more often than not more days on than off and my pain hasn’t really gotten much better but it’s you know mediated by the medication so some of you know and i’ve shared online that recently i’ve been seeing some new doctors and soon some
New pain management specialists and i really wanted to stop taking the gabapentin i felt like it was kind of masking my pain receptors and i wanted to see how i just felt not taking it and instead of weaning off of it because i was on a relatively low dose and again was told that there were no real addiction issues with this drug i just decided to stop taking it
And i’m about seven days into not taking it and these seven days are really sucked and i’m gonna tell you why because the minute that i stopped taking it within 24 hours i started not being able to sleep i got really anxious i started having some night sweats and and worse i started having diffuse just pain all over all over my body front back sides inside outside
It felt like my bones hurt it felt like my organs heard it felt like all my muscles hurt and that’s better seven days later but still kind of there so i’ve realized in talking to some medical professional friends and clients of mine that i’m basically going through gabapentin withdrawal my body is detoxing from taking this drug and the reason why i’m doing this
Video is number one just to share with you that you know here i was taking a drug that i kind of needed really needed to get through but it turns out that it was changing my brain chemistry in such a way to make it more difficult for me to feel pain in other ways and possibly masking things that i didn’t even need to mask okay number two it’s important to really
Find out from your doctors about all the medications that you’re taking and whether they have any addictive potential and what it would be like to stop taking them even if you’re taking them at a pretty low dose and in a pretty mellow way number three if you’re being prescribed gabapentin for anything off-label as in a restless leg syndrome or general anxiety or
Because you can’t sleep or because you’re having hot flashes from menopause i would go take a look at that because based on how i feel right now seven days after stopping this drug and based on how i felt a few days ago over the holiday weekend was i wasn’t like in the middle of some intense intense shitty shitty ass detox i wouldn’t take it i’m scared of that
Drug now i don’t want to take that drug anymore and i think i’ve shared one of the things that i’m going to be doing to handle my pain now that i’ve taken all the shingles vaccine so i’m no longer having shingles is i’m going to have some anti-inflammatory injected right into my sciatic nerve at the roots that should calm everything down and should actually keep
It calm because once i’m not getting shingles again there’s nothing else going on in my lower back to make that any worse and hopefully within two or three days this gabapentin will be out of my system because it’s it’s really not been a fun ride with us with this at all i’m finally starting to sleep i’m finally having less muscle ache and pain my body stiffened
Up my joints stiffened up and just everything everything everything head to toe hurt so anyway i’m on the mend now when things are feeling much better and i’m off the gabapentin and i’ve got a plan for dealing with the chronic nerve pain and we’re all good but i really just wanted to share with you be afraid of gabapentin my friends be very afraid of gabapentin
Especially since they’re prescribing it so much off-label now and it’s becoming basically a substitute for a lot of times when they used to prescribe an opioid so with that i bid you a good evening bye
Transcribed from video
Gabapentin Withdrawal is Horrible! By Lynda Lippin Pilates
