After searching online for days on this topic I am thankful to everyone in this thread for contributing. I was feeling pretty isolated before.

My psychiatrist and neruo-psychologist recommended taking Gabapentin as a mood stabilizer to ease the volatile roller coaster of emotions I was experiencing a year after a violent assault by a stranger who attempted manslaughter. In short, I suffered a TBI and needed facial reconstruction surgery. Needless to say my life has never been the same as I have had hundreds of medical appointments since. I was diagnosed with PTSD and have experienced so many health challenges since, some of which are anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation and as not often discussed, sexual dysfunction.

I was on Gabapentin for a total of 8 months. I started at 100mg/day (before bed) for the first month. Then it was increased to 200mg/day for the second month. Then it was increased to 300mg/day for the third month, but I had a very strong reaction to the 300mg as I am very sensitive and after 4 days my dr.'s reduced my dose back to 200mg for the remainder of my usage. For the most part, I couldn't tell a significant difference but my family said they could so I continued with the usage until the 7th and 8th month when I started waking up with headaches that would last a few hours and I was having difficulty sleeping. I believed it was caused by my medication so I asked my dr.'s when I could taper down to see how things would be. That was three weeks ago.

Because I was on a low dose, my dr.s said take a week to drop down to 100mg/day, then go off completely.

Give or take a day, I followed these instructions until I was completely off the medication.

Everything was pretty good for about 96 hours.

Then what seemed like out of nowhere between day 4 and day 8 post gabapentin, I experienced loss of arousal, low libido, sexual dysfunction, mild depression and had 1 very emotional day of crying.

After talking extensively with my mom, a good friend and feeling reassured from my girlfriend on day 8 I have been less emotional but still feeling sad and apathetic.

For whatever reason I wasn't killed that day and since I am still alive I am going to keep fighting by doing what I can control like my diet and exercise and meditation and give myself grace through this recovery process.

I hope that my story can provide some help and possibly hope to others.

And likewise, if anyone can offer any insight into how life was like immediately after or longer thereafter taking gabapentin, I thank you ahead of time.

Sincerely,
Caleb

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