OMG! I wouldn't have thought coming off Lyrica would create such severe withdrawal symptoms! I'm so sorry for all you've suffered! I've only had withdrawal symptoms for 2 days now, nothing like your several-month ordeal!! I hope tapering off the last 50mg is somewhat easier for you.

I'm glad you have a supportive husband to help you through the withdrawal! What I've learned from being on a whole mess of different drugs I've taken concurrently to manage pain, depression, anxiety, brain fog, is that they can turn who into a bit of a zombie. Now that I'm completely off the opiates, I feel like I finally woke up from being in the fog! I'm much less forgetful, I can actually plan tasks and execute them. It's like having "mission control" back! 🙂

BTW, I took Lyrica (a starting dose, I presume,...was 7 years ago) and I quit it after a couple days. My brain couldn't take it. Felt like I was up in the ether.

Happy that you're almost done with this journey. You're a strong woman!!

My withdrawal from Gabapentin (generic for Neurontin), the precursor drug to Lyrica developed by the same pharmaceutical company, was extremely difficult. And, my pain doctor was not helping me. I was on 900 mg and he told me to just stop taking it. Fortunately, I had read on this site about the horrible time people had withdrawing. I contacted my pharmacist and he helped me work out a schedule for withdrawing. I had a hard time, but I really wanted off, and if I went down a step too soon, I just went back up to the previous level for another week. I'm so happy to be off it. I personally think that it's a dangerous drug. I actually had less pain when I got off it.

Gail B
Volunteer Mentor

Gail Dr.had me on Neurotin but in the first couple of nights my mouth@throat where so dry I thought I was going to choke so she stopped it

I can't find the discussion about Kratom ,but Dr.Mercola .com has a good article about this today and how the FDA is calling again for it as dangerous drug ,they want to ban it.very interesting article.

Did you have some clearing of brain fog? Better short term memory? I recognized both in the extreme - I had been on the max dose of about 3600 mg/day.

I'm not sure to whom you're addressing your question. Are you referring to 3600mg of **gabapentin**? I assume so because I know that 3600mg is the label max for gabapentin.

I started this discussion thread about tapering off **Kadian (morphine)**. Other people are posting about getting off Lyrica and gabapentin, neither of which is an opiate. The posts are interesting and I have no objection to them, but I'm disappointed not to hear anything about tapering off opiates, and specifically, morphine.

I do very much appreciate suggestions about waiting to taper till I get to Mayo. Unfortunately, I am now on Day 6 on zero morphine. I began to experience withdrawal symptoms on Day 2 of zero morphine. By "withdrawal symptoms" I mean: wakefulness during normal sleep hours, heightened anxiety, heightened pain, diarrhea. It is the heightened pain that is most distressing.

I've been waiting more than 24 hours to receive calls back from a nurse at Mayo Pain Clinic and from my local pain doctor. What I want to know is: at this point (i.e., Six days off all opiates) can I expect the pain to still improve and how long is it likely to take? I have no objection to returning to 20 or 40mg per day of morphine but I'd really appreciate some **guidance**, particularly from any nurse at Mayo Pain Clinic, but also from my local pain MD.

--Elsa

@elsa, I did post a response to tapering and discontinuing morphine (mine is/was Dilaudid which is a synthetic that the body converts into morphine. I think my original post shows just below this one. I posted about gabapentin as I did not realize my reply was in the original thread of your question about tapering off morphine. Sorry if I created any confusion.

Hi Gary, thanks for your clarification. I apologize for not paying closer attention to your post. I didn't know Dilaudid is an opiate!!

(I'm a bit confused about how these "threads" work. In particular, when you post a reply, is the convention that you're replying to the person who posted directly above you? It seems if one person's reply diverts the original topic to a *related* topic that doesn't address the original topic, then other members reply to the off-topic post, and pretty soon the majority of posts can be about a number of things that are really quite different from the topic of the thread. Correct?)

BTW, I spoke to a nurse at Mayo this afternoon as well as my local pain doctor. Am going back up to 20mg Kadian tomorrow morning. If my pain isn't better controlled at 20mg after a day or two, I'll go back up to 40mg/day. Glad that I don't have to tough it out at "zero" for much longer!

@elsa

In order to respond directly to a comment, you need to put their @name somewhere in your post. I always do what I did here, putting the name at the top.

Jim

@elsa

I have peripheral neuropathy, with pretty serious pain in my feet. I started taking morphine sulfate contin at almost the same time as Cymbalta, so I had no way of knowing what effect each one was having. So, I tapered off morphine, 30mg three times a day, over the course of a few weeks. I learned that the morphine was probably doing most, if not all, of the pain treatment. I later stopped the Cymbalta, and found that it was doing less than nothing.

I don't remember what withdrawal was like because I was just trying to learn if it was the morphine or the Cymbalta that was helping my pain. In the process, I figured out that Cymbalta was having another undesirable side effect, that being ED. I went back to morphine, but I was able to stop at 15mg twice a day.

Jim