So I started taking Gabapentin again to help treat my anxiety from CPTSD and Bipolar Disorder! **ALSO I DEF MISPRONOUNCED Neurontin SORRY**
What’s up youtube i am here today to discuss medication changes it’s been a while since i talked to y’all about some of the medications i was on but i figure you know it’s been enough time and i should probably just get back into it so today i’m going to be talking to you all about gabapentin which i have been on before but i didn’t really take it they were like
I just have this thing about medicine we’re like if the pill is really large for some reason i don’t like taking it i don’t like taking medicine like normally anyway like i hate the idea of how you take medicine in order to like be better i’m not saying that like you know medicine isn’t great especially if you have a mental illness you should take it but and is
Awesome savior i’ve been on so many medications forever i just have some weird mental thing about taking it so i decided to try gabapentin again mainly because i’m not currently on my list via medication so i’ve like tried that again and that didn’t work out so i’m not on any medication right now to treat my bipolar disorder so no mood stabilizers and that’s
Been going great i’ll make an update about that but the biggest thing is that like i still have anxiety which sucks and i realized that now that it’s more so about just things i haven’t dealt with regarding like my ptsd and a lot of those issues so it’s less about just having anxiety for no reason and like taking a pill to like magically fix it and it’s more
About having like medication is sort of like lower that anxiety i still have it but to make it more manageable while i currently deal with my issues surrounding like complex ptsd sorry i said ptsd earlier complex ptsd which just means it’s trauma calm like trauma over a long period of time that’s now like manifest yourself not just now ma’am manifesting himself
It’s it’s been here for a while but anyway gabapentin which is also naruto ninh i’m taking 300 milligrams a day and i’m taking one capsule by mouth twice daily for the most part i’ve really only been taking one the day it’s really cool in terms of this indication that you know all the other ones the buspar that i’ve been on and some of the other medications for
Anxiety you need to take it for a few weeks that haven’t built up in your system dinah tenten doesn’t work like that so it’s sort of in the same regard towards xanax that you kind of take it as needed it’s not anything similar his antics at all but in terms of like the times that’s how i’ve understand it so it comes in like these little capsules these little
Pills which makes it easier for me to take there’s still like kind of large but like before they were like these big white oval shapes and like that was just like not really doing it for me so a little bit more about gabapentin like i said it’s called neuro tone and it’s gabapentin but it’s also nerd tone it’s like the same thing as it was originally created
As an anticonvulsant and unless it originally it still is an anticonvulsant so that means that it’s primarily used to treat seizures and that is currently what the fda has approved before now i am taking it for my anxiety and it’s not approved by the fda for that and it’s actually a lot of people say either has worked or it hasn’t worked there’s like lots of
Different studies that showed either has been good for people anxiety or that it has actually been negative um the interesting thing that i have learned more about this medication is that it actually has tried a lot for people who have bipolar disorder and different mood disorders so that’s interesting but it’s not really that recommended as being something that
Can be placed traditional medication so i am not a scientist by any mean or a doctor i’m not sure that’s what scientists do regardless i’m terrible at math and science so i wanted to give kind of like an amateur explanation about like the actual sign the components behind it cuz i think that’s sort of my next step in trying to like understand medication i think
It’s good to explain like how these medications affect me emotionally and like side-effects and all of that but i think also important to understand sort of like what’s really going on inside like the brain component that makes sense so gabapentin and gaba are they the same not exactly so gaba i’m not sure if y’all heard of gaba y’all probably afraid of gapless
Essentially it’s a neurotransmitter it’s an inhibitory neurotransmitter from what i understand so it inhibits certain signals again new transmitters are the signals that send throughout our brains gaba basically inhibits those and slows them down which also therefore then decreases activity that’s happening in our brain or in our social nervous system essentially
When gaba attaches to a gaba receptor which is in our brain to create create sort of like a soothing effect or like a calming effect so this sort of helps limit feelings of anxiety and stress and just like panic in general so essentially gaba because it blocks certain neurotransmitters it blocks from my understanding all of those stressors or those signals that
Would be causing stress and anxiety in like fear and all those like bad things gaba is what sort of helped that and helps your body is sort of like control and manage those feelings though the part of it that i don’t really understand while gala is used to sort of calm those exciting signals in our brain gabapentin is like not exactly the same as gaba because
It affects like doesn’t affect the same gaba receptors in the mind again gaba being an amino acid that attaches itself to a protein and the gaba receptors which is like the actual way it reduces stress so grab a pendant doesn’t attach itself to the same receptors which is interesting but at the same time it’s still prescribed to use in treating xiety because it
Sort of mimics the same effects so that’s sort of like how i understand it i’m assuming that you know you have anxiety and you have severe anxiety or like especially complex ptsd like trauma that has been throughout i’ll put it in context in my life i had trauma throughout my childhood since i was like born basically born into it and then starting to see those
Effects in my anxiety effects increase and i got into high school and then really being like problems in my life now i’m guessing it’s because my brain has trouble with like producing gala or has trouble maintaining that so this sort of acts as a i wouldn’t call it a supplement but it sort of helps my brain maintain when it’s supposed to be doing normally to
Sort of bring down the anxiety or just like those signals of fear and stress and all those things now it doesn’t get rid of it completely and i think that was the mistake i had made i had been looking for an anxiety medication that would wipe out my anxiety so i wouldn’t have constant anxiety over everything and i think that’s just like impossible a lot of the
Things that i have been working on again relate to my ptsd and it’s just stuff that like even i know could be logically true i still get i something’s still afraid over certain things when i still have anxiety over certain things so again this really isn’t to be used as like a fix it’s really just for me to be able to use so i can work out like my other problems
Without just being completely destroyed and just completely distraught the great thing about gabapentin indira tonin that i’ve realized like so far and that you know researchers have said virmire from my research on google gabapentin is better than xanax and other anti-anxiety drugs that i use that way one it’s less addictive it has way less side effects and it’s
Able to sort of mimic the effects of gaba without causing a lot of like withdrawal symptoms so like for xanax you can build up a tolerance not a tolerance you can build up sort of i guess like a dependency on it and you definitely can feel withdrawal effects with gabapentin you know i could stop i could take this today tomorrow the next day and then i can stop
And it won’t like necessarily feel like any type of way and again i can really just take it as needed so i am going to try this i am excited for it i did try it before it didn’t really work but i think that was because i was looking at my anxiety issues in a different way i was really looking at again to get rid of my anxiety as a whole and i don’t think that
That’s one possible flash like productive or productive because you know i’m still like not dealing with my main issues which is why years later we’re here now it’s really interesting i haven’t a whole bunch of research on this but it’s also been like you know used for people who have bipolar disorder as i said a lot of the studies say it’s not as effective
In controlling moods but that it it can be used as like kind of an add-on to whatever medication that you would be taking for your moods for that sort of anxiety / like mania acute mania feel a lot like research says that it works for mania but it’s not like again mood stabilizing in a lot of the research is like iffy in general but i’m taking it for anxiety
I do plan on taking a mood stabilizer eventually once everything’s cleared out my system and my doctor says that like you know i can jump on another medication but until then i am optimistic for this i’m feeling you know pretty good and it’s working i definitely think that’s working especially being cooped up in the house during this quarantine it really does
Help level me out now it doesn’t feel like a xanax at all i think the difference between like me thinking it’s working is not only that like i don’t want not only that my anxiety i have hasn’t gone away completely because that’s not gonna happen as i said it’s also that euphoria feelings so what xanax i’m like oh this is working because like i can like feel the
Euphoria and like well that’s good it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s working / like you don’t necessarily have to feel the euphoria for it to work so i’m going to be focusing a lot on this and trying to figure out how this really does make me feel and excited because it has very little side effects and yeah we’ll see how this gets started i will leave y’all with
This as i do all of these medication updates and sort of what i’ve been going through and i provide you know recommendations soft recommendations like obviously don’t listen to me again my like phd comes from google and from like youtube but other youtube videos same as what y’all are doing but i read a lot of online about like them people saying like oh this
Doesn’t really work for bipolar disorder or like oh this will make things worse or like this will make your anxiety work worse or like this doesn’t work for anxiety i hear all these different things and i think that within any medication that you choose yes there are some indications worth like you just shouldn’t be on it because of the chemical compounds or like
You know side effects that may be causing or like there’s things that are obviously just bad for you for things like gabapentin there’s mixed reviews online like some people say it helps some people say it doesn’t and i think that it’s really up to the person taking it so like i’m gonna try abba penton again because i think it’s working for me now it doesn’t
Mean it worked in the past it doesn’t mean it’s always gonna work in the future your bodies change your environment changes things that we do change it impacts our behavior impacts our mental illness in fact the medication that we’re taking it’s not good enough for me to just say like oh you guys have a pentium really works for me doesn’t mean it’s going to work
For you not saying that it’s not or that it is but it also means that like you know if i’m getting off my lithium medication and i’m feeling great and all i have to work on right now is ptsd and anxiety and that’s what i’m going through it doesn’t mean that like i’m wrong because i know like you should trust like how you were feeling even if your doctor tells
You no like i did not gonna be on my lithium medication and i’m not now and i’m feeling great my doctor like obviously was hesitant about it and like with good reason but i think at the end of the day you sort of know how you’re feeling you know what works you know what medications aren’t working so you really have to trust yourself and then like yes doctors
And healthcare professionals are here to help you guides away but you really should start thinking about it in the sense that like you are a customer and they are like their providers so you kind of drive those conversations you can kind of you know dictate what you want and what makes you feel better excited today no one can tell you like what makes you feel
Good like lithium is one of the most widely used medications ever and like it wasn’t making me feel great like yeah my moods were good but mike my side effects were terrible and i was just like i don’t care what you guys say like i’m getting off of this because you guys don’t feel what i feel same thing with like anxiety medication i didn’t want to be on xanax
Anymore i was taking it as needed i didn’t feel personally like i was really dependent on it or addictive to that i just didn’t want to be on it and that was just for me now someone else who might feel the same way i do might feel like they just meeting with antics cuz that’s the only thing that can really help them through like severe severe panic attacks and
Really put it like stop it in his tracks and that was me for a while don’t want a doctor tell you that like oh we shouldn’t ride because it is addictive now be like hesitant and like be like take all the information in but at the end of the day you you really do know yourself and i think that’s what we need to start trusting is that like we can’t be just dictated
To we should receive information and then make informed choices based on what we’ve heard and sort of how we’re feeling so yep i’m going to give this a try like share and comments see whatever medications y’all have tried and you try to have a pendant is it working for you do you recommend anything else i would love to hear it hope y’all are staying sleep and
Healthy and that you guys are staying inside because this quarantine is just like having us all stay inside so or guess we’re all inside hopefully it’s lifted soon all right y’all i will hit y’all back with a new video soon and you’ll have an amazing day or whenever you are watching this just be great peace you
Transcribed from video
Taking Gabapentin (Neurontin) for Anxiety & Bipolar Disorder By Juliuss | \A Series on Navigating Mental Illness\
