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Hi all, I've modified the title of this discussion to "Side effects and benefits of Gabapentin." While many of you have had really difficult reactions and side effects to the drug (thanks for sharing), I have read elsewhere on the forum that this drug works well for some people.
For those of you who had poor experiences with gabapentin, did you switch to another medication that worked? Did a different dosage or taking at a different time of day help, or taking extended-release vs immediate release?
Despite the drug's potentially serious side effects, some people depend on this drug to control seizures and manage pain successfully. I'd like to hear from people who have had success with this drug as well. Anyone? How has it helped you? What form of the drug works for you?
Replies to "Hi all, I've modified the title of this discussion to "Side effects and benefits of Gabapentin."..."
Thank you, Ms. Young, for changing the title.
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Good luck finding a lot of positive stories about treating pain with this drug. You'll find a lot more concerning siezure control. What needs to understood is that this drug has not been subjected to rigorous and repeatable testing as a pain med. We need to understand the implications of "off label uses", of medications. Once a drug is approved for one use it has shown ethicasy for only that one use and it has been found to be safe enough for human consumption. After that Doctors can prescribe it for any thing they want and this is usually done based on anecdotal evidence alone. There has been some research on gabapentin for pain management
That research is referred to as "medium quality" and "limited". It is most useful for the nerve pain caused by herpes, shingles and diabetes. It showed poor results for lower back pain. In the other cases it was successful for in one example for 3 out of 10 subjects. In the same study, 2 of 10 got similar results from a placebo. In another case, 5 of 10 got relief from gabapentin while 3 of 10 got relief from a placebo. For a drug that comes with a "black box" warning and is rising in terms of abuse, those numbers are not very good. The first time I took the drug was to treat nerve pain and it was absolutely useless. Several years later, it was prescribed for me again to treat severe neuropathy which was caused by receiving very large doses of chemotherapy. It was all so useless in that case. That time I was given Lyrica which at the time was extremely expensive. I was told that it was a greatly improved form of Gabapentin. My experience would indicate otherwise. I recall a physician telling me that, ("There are no new drugs, only new names").
Gabapentin and Lyrica are not a satisfactory replacement for narcotics which are still the best way to treat most kinds of pain, especially back pain, post-surgical pain, and pain caused by cancer. Being a cancer patient, which I am , and being a drug addict, which I am not and have never been are jvm two entirely different things. To have the treatment recommended for the latter inform the best practices for treating the former is an inhumane, bastardization of medical ethics as well as a windfall for the manufacturers of gabapentin and Lyrica.