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Gabapentinoids Recurring Gabapentin Withdrawal

T

ThreeDice456

Greenlighter
Joined
Apr 23, 2022
Messages
19
Hey everybody, so ive had about 15 years of addiction, opiates, benzos etc. I currently have everything pretty much under control, im on 65 mgs of methadone daily. Ive been using and abusing Gabapentin on and off for about 5 years now. Theres been 6 month periods where i took 8000mgs a day and then cold turkeyed, so im familiar with how bad the withdrawals can suck but this is a new problem. For about the past 8 months ive been taking between 900 - 1800 mgs a day, but I’ve completely stopped for weeks at a time at least 3 times in that 8 month period. So April 20th was day 16 of no gabs for me. The problem im having is the withdrawals all but cease by 12-13 and then on day 16 i wokeup at 4am after only sleeping 5 hrs and couldn’t fall back asleep. So as the day goes on im feeling worse and worse like the withdrawals have came back, my hands and feet get cold, general anxiety, not even wanting to go outside to smoke, no appetite and seem like im pissing alot. I went to bed, only slept like 6 hrs that night, wokeup day 17 feeling kind of shitty, but by 6pm im almost feeling back to normal again, like the withdrawals are gone. I go to bed and again i wakeup around 4am, cant go back to bed. So its day 18 and im feeling kind of shitty again, like all the symptoms I described are back. The thing is, this has happened to me like the past 3 times ive tried to quit these fucking things and it’s freaking me out. I really dont want to take them because they kill my ambition and a bunch of other shit and im trying to rid myself of addictions. But this is making it really hard and making me question is this like a recurring PAWS or is something else wrong with me? Has anybody else experienced this from gabapentin withdrawal? Any advice would be greatly appreciated and if this needs to be moved to a better place thats cool too.

Edit: I want to say also that I’ve noticed that alot of times when i stop taking the gabs it will take 4-5 days for the withdrawals to even kick in. This is a relatively new thing for me as well. It used to always be by the second day of not having any, the withdrawals would really kick in, but over the past year or so is when I noticed it takes like 5 days to start.
 
ThreeDice456 said:
Hey everybody, so ive had about 15 years of addiction, opiates, benzos etc. I currently have everything pretty much under control, im on 65 mgs of methadone daily. Ive been using and abusing Gabapentin on and off for about 5 years now. Theres been 6 month periods where i took 8000mgs a day and then cold turkeyed, so im familiar with how bad the withdrawals can suck but this is a new problem. For about the past 8 months ive been taking between 900 - 1800 mgs a day, but I’ve completely stopped for weeks at a time at least 3 times in that 8 month period. So April 20th was day 16 of no gabs for me. The problem im having is the withdrawals all but cease by 12-13 and then on day 16 i wokeup at 4am after only sleeping 5 hrs and couldn’t fall back asleep. So as the day goes on im feeling worse and worse like the withdrawals have came back, my hands and feet get cold, general anxiety, not even wanting to go outside to smoke, no appetite and seem like im pissing alot. I went to bed, only slept like 6 hrs that night, wokeup day 17 feeling kind of shitty, but by 6pm im almost feeling back to normal again, like the withdrawals are gone. I go to bed and again i wakeup around 4am, cant go back to bed. So its day 18 and im feeling kind of shitty again, like all the symptoms I described are back. The thing is, this has happened to me like the past 3 times ive tried to quit these fucking things and it’s freaking me out. I really dont want to take them because they kill my ambition and a bunch of other shit and im trying to rid myself of addictions. But this is making it really hard and making me question is this like a recurring PAWS or is something else wrong with me? Has anybody else experienced this from gabapentin withdrawal? Any advice would be greatly appreciated and if this needs to be moved to a better place thats cool too.

Edit: I want to say also that I’ve noticed that alot of times when i stop taking the gabs it will take 4-5 days for the withdrawals to even kick in. This is a relatively new thing for me as well. It used to always be by the second day of not having any, the withdrawals would really kick in, but over the past year or so is when I noticed it takes like 5 days to start.
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That ios the norm with gabapentin and pregabalin wd 6 od day wd dont go to deep the wds on these are mental
 
ThreeDice456 said:
Hey everybody, so ive had about 15 years of addiction, opiates, benzos etc. I currently have everything pretty much under control, im on 65 mgs of methadone daily. Ive been using and abusing Gabapentin on and off for about 5 years now. Theres been 6 month periods where i took 8000mgs a day and then cold turkeyed, so im familiar with how bad the withdrawals can suck but this is a new problem. For about the past 8 months ive been taking between 900 - 1800 mgs a day, but I’ve completely stopped for weeks at a time at least 3 times in that 8 month period. So April 20th was day 16 of no gabs for me. The problem im having is the withdrawals all but cease by 12-13 and then on day 16 i wokeup at 4am after only sleeping 5 hrs and couldn’t fall back asleep. So as the day goes on im feeling worse and worse like the withdrawals have came back, my hands and feet get cold, general anxiety, not even wanting to go outside to smoke, no appetite and seem like im pissing alot. I went to bed, only slept like 6 hrs that night, wokeup day 17 feeling kind of shitty, but by 6pm im almost feeling back to normal again, like the withdrawals are gone. I go to bed and again i wakeup around 4am, cant go back to bed. So its day 18 and im feeling kind of shitty again, like all the symptoms I described are back. The thing is, this has happened to me like the past 3 times ive tried to quit these fucking things and it’s freaking me out. I really dont want to take them because they kill my ambition and a bunch of other shit and im trying to rid myself of addictions. But this is making it really hard and making me question is this like a recurring PAWS or is something else wrong with me? Has anybody else experienced this from gabapentin withdrawal? Any advice would be greatly appreciated and if this needs to be moved to a better place thats cool too.

Edit: I want to say also that I’ve noticed that alot of times when i stop taking the gabs it will take 4-5 days for the withdrawals to even kick in. This is a relatively new thing for me as well. It used to always be by the second day of not having any, the withdrawals would really kick in, but over the past year or so is when I noticed it takes like 5 days to start.
Click to expand...
So to answer your question, yes I think this is PAWs of some sort. Right now gabapentin/pregabalin addictions are poorly understood and there is no “gold standard” approach to treating this addiction per say, not in the way that we have like methadone and suboxone to mediate opiate withdrawal.
To me, your description sounds like the phenomenon known as “kindling”. If you google benzodiapine withdrawal and “kindling” you’ll find a lot of different resources about it. Kindling is a a recognized neurological condition that occurs with repeated benzodiazepine/alcohol/other gaba drug withdrawals. Every time you withdraw you end up with longer and more severe withdrawal episodes then the last time. This is believed to be due to the chronic gaba receptor downregulation associated with gaba drug use combined with increased glutamate activity(sometimes called glutamate storm) due to the withdrawal. The effects can be very long lasting, severe and cause permanent brain damage.
The current approach to manage the kindling effect is to prevent “cold turkey” gaba drug discontinuation at all costs and instead to slowly taper the drug at a rate of no more than a 10% reduction per week. This entire process is ideally managed by a doctor with experience in managing kindling/benzo withdrawal. Most MDs are shit at this so you gotta be careful who you pick to walk through this with you.
I can appreciate that you likely don’t want to give up the 17+ days of hell you’ve already been through. But from personal experience I know that gaba drug withdrawal is its own league in terms of severity. There are no work arounds or hacks. So my suggestion to you to prevent further brain damage is to see a doctor, restart the gabapentin on a dose he/she recommends and then when you have stabilized on your dose, start the taper at no more than a 10% reduction per week as tolerated (you will likely need to go much slower then 10%). Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll try to answer them for you.
 
Conscious-signal-447 said:
So to answer your question, yes I think this is PAWs of some sort. Right now gabapentin/pregabalin addictions are poorly understood and there is no “gold standard” approach to treating this addiction per say, not in the way that we have like methadone and suboxone to mediate opiate withdrawal.
To me, your description sounds like the phenomenon known as “kindling”. If you google benzodiapine withdrawal and “kindling” you’ll find a lot of different resources about it. Kindling is a a recognized neurological condition that occurs with repeated benzodiazepine/alcohol/other gaba drug withdrawals. Every time you withdraw you end up with longer and more severe withdrawal episodes then the last time. This is believed to be due to the chronic gaba receptor downregulation associated with gaba drug use combined with increased glutamate activity(sometimes called glutamate storm) due to the withdrawal. The effects can be very long lasting, severe and cause permanent brain damage.
The current approach to manage the kindling effect is to prevent “cold turkey” gaba drug discontinuation at all costs and instead to slowly taper the drug at a rate of no more than a 10% reduction per week. This entire process is ideally managed by a doctor with experience in managing kindling/benzo withdrawal. Most MDs are shit at this so you gotta be careful who you pick to walk through this with you.
I can appreciate that you likely don’t want to give up the 17+ days of hell you’ve already been through. But from personal experience I know that gaba drug withdrawal is its own league in terms of severity. There are no work arounds or hacks. So my suggestion to you to prevent further brain damage is to see a doctor, restart the gabapentin on a dose he/she recommends and then when you have stabilized on your dose, start the taper at no more than a 10% reduction per week as tolerated (you will likely need to go much slower then 10%). Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll try to answer them for you.
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Thanks so much, im going to look into this Kindling tonight. That sounds like it could be exactly my problem because ive been thru cold turkey on these things dozens of times and even as short as 3 years ago it would be about 7-10 days and id be 100 percent better, and that was when i was taking very large doses, compared to the relatively low dose ive been on for the past 8 months.
 
I found that my withdrawal start times for gabapentin and the length of withdrawal started acting funny when I went on Methadone. It could actually be the methadone. It almost seemed like gabapentin messed with my methadone levels, my bodies ability to process methadone and the way my methadone affected me. Alcohol has a similar but slightly different affect on Methadone for me.

It could possibly have something to do with it. It was very strange the way each substance affected my methadone dosing and I actually almost posted something about it to inquire what could possibly be going on.

Alcohol binges make my methadone dose dysphoric feeling for days after and then it's as if my body has to build levels back up and my dose won't hold me all day for a while. Food for thought.

Could also be kindling and PAWS as well because I think I had a bit of that going on for gaba but methadone definitely changed things for me.

I definitely believe methadone slows down metabolism, drug clearance and other drugs affect methadone... vice versa... That was my observational opinion.
 
Last edited:
somnilicious said:
I found that my withdrawal start times for gabapentin and the length of withdrawal started acting funny when I went on Methadone. It could actually be the methadone. It almost seemed like gabapentin messed with my methadone levels, my bodies ability to process methadone and the way my methadone affected me. Alcohol has a similar but slightly different affect on Methadone for me.

It could possibly have something to do with it. It was very strange the way each substance affected my methadone dosing and I actually almost posted something about it to inquire what could possibly be going on.

Alcohol binges make my methadone dose dysphoric feeling for days after and then it's as if my body has to build levels back up and my dose won't hold me all day for a while. Food for thought.

Could also be kindling and PAWS as well because I think I had a bit of that going on for gaba but methadone definitely changed things for me.

I definitely believe methadone slows down metabolism, drug clearance and other drugs affect methadone... vice versa... That was my observational opinion.
Click to expand...
Thats a good point. My mom was saying she thought it could be the methadone interacting with the gabapentin as well.
 
ThreeDice456 said:
Nah im off it now after 4 years. Still on gabs tho
Click to expand...
Lol the only thing that takes the pain away a bit from gaba wds are alcohol ime. They don't last long(5-7 days tops) but it gives u a massive headache and chills, rls, sweats, etc. I stopped fucking with it after a mini lapse few weeks ago. Don't wanna touch it for a good while tbh. Already hooked on clonazepam and tramadol.
 
F.U.B.A.R. said:
Oh fuck. I've been abusing gabapentin in an attempt to get off booze, but found myself doing both.

Help...
Click to expand...
Same thing basically with me used pregabalin to ger of brown then got addicted to pregabs now both if on a massive dose of gaba reduce by a big amount you will still have enough in the system to keep normal then a slow long taper. I was on 60 300 mg a day and cut that in half straight away 30 300 mg was enough so not bad wd then a slow 6-month taper
 
I was on 300 mg pregabalin once a a day (at night, it helps me sleep.) I switched over to 800 mg gabapentin 2x a day, morning and night. I have been struggling to taper down from there, though. The 800 mg pills are what I have, and I could cut those in half, but that’s a big jump. My prescribing doctor doesn’t know (yet) that I want to taper off, because I was hoping to get a few more scripts of this and just stockpile, before I eventually tell him that I’m going off it. It’s extremely useful and I often give it out to friends for recreational or therapeutic use. Not to mention it definitely works for my back pain AND anxiety.

Don’t have access to Valium and I wouldn’t want to take that daily anyway because of a prior benzo addiction, would using a small amount of alcohol assist me with the withdrawal? I can just put an airplane-sized bottle of booze in my coffee in the morning…
 
Alcohol will help with the anxiety, but the hangover hurts really bad while going through gabapentin withdrawal
 
nznity said:
Lol the only thing that takes the pain away a bit from gaba wds are alcohol ime. They don't last long(5-7 days tops) but it gives u a massive headache and chills, rls, sweats, etc. I stopped fucking with it after a mini lapse few weeks ago. Don't wanna touch it for a good while tbh. Already hooked on clonazepam and tramadol.
Click to expand...
how long were u using it and at what dosage?
 
Hmmm. I've been on gabapentin for about 7 years in conjunction with hydromorphone. 2400 mg a day on the Gabas. I've dropped down to 1800 now and I'm working at getting off it. It doesn't do anything for me anymore except keep another drug I'm dependent on in the mix. I've never withdrawn from Gabs and I think I can skip ever having the experience. I've been fine on the 1800 mg dose for about 2 1/2 weeks now. I'll drop down to 1200 in a couple days. My doctor was thinking since I have such issues with RLS I should stay on it but it doesn't do anything for the RLS. Without the Dilaudid I would not be able to sleep. It's unnrelenting. Pure torture. I use cannabis which helps with anxiety but even that won't touch my RLS. Preglaban was a total waste of time. Actually made things worse.

If I'm up in the wee hours fighting the RLS usually one 2 mg dilaudid and a couple Benadryl will get it calmed down so I can sleep. A 600 mg gabapentin won't do squat. I may as well have eaten a Skittle. But if I just stop taking it all at once I'm willing to bet I'll find out what it's keeping from happenning.
 
Conscious-signal-447 said:
So to answer your question, yes I think this is PAWs of some sort. Right now gabapentin/pregabalin addictions are poorly understood and there is no “gold standard” approach to treating this addiction per say, not in the way that we have like methadone and suboxone to mediate opiate withdrawal.
To me, your description sounds like the phenomenon known as “kindling”. If you google benzodiapine withdrawal and “kindling” you’ll find a lot of different resources about it. Kindling is a a recognized neurological condition that occurs with repeated benzodiazepine/alcohol/other gaba drug withdrawals. Every time you withdraw you end up with longer and more severe withdrawal episodes then the last time. This is believed to be due to the chronic gaba receptor downregulation associated with gaba drug use combined with increased glutamate activity(sometimes called glutamate storm) due to the withdrawal. The effects can be very long lasting, severe and cause permanent brain damage.
The current approach to manage the kindling effect is to prevent “cold turkey” gaba drug discontinuation at all costs and instead to slowly taper the drug at a rate of no more than a 10% reduction per week. This entire process is ideally managed by a doctor with experience in managing kindling/benzo withdrawal. Most MDs are shit at this so you gotta be careful who you pick to walk through this with you.
I can appreciate that you likely don’t want to give up the 17+ days of hell you’ve already been through. But from personal experience I know that gaba drug withdrawal is its own league in terms of severity. There are no work arounds or hacks. So my suggestion to you to prevent further brain damage is to see a doctor, restart the gabapentin on a dose he/she recommends and then when you have stabilized on your dose, start the taper at no more than a 10% reduction per week as tolerated (you will likely need to go much slower then 10%). Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll try to answer them for you.
Click to expand...
Ive noticed a larger variation in effect between individuals for gabapentin than any other drug. In withdrawals too (Or especially).
 
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