Gabapentin side effects?
I am a regular on the Mayo Board! I don't know what I would do without it! Our doctors don't want to discuss openly the things about illnesses and side effets of drugs and other things. Anyway, my question to all of you is Gabapentin and it's side effects. I have been on it now for 6 months. My doctor raised me from 100mg. to now I am on 400mg. three times a day.
The problem is my tiredness! I happen to be in a friends office yesterday and she was taking some medicine. She said she was taking Gabapentin. I asked why and she said she had, had shingles back when and it still helped with the pain. I know the drug is percribed for many things that is why I take it for my issues.
I told her I had been taking it for about 6 months. She asked if I had been tired all the time, just out of the Blue. OF COURSE I SAID YES! She said it took her a year before she got out of the tiredness.
Let me know if any of you have experienced the same thing. Also let me know at what dosage you may be on? I know this is all confidential!
Again Thanks to The Mayo Clinic and Everyone who is kind enough to be open with their lives!
Sundance!
Interested in more discussions like this? Go to the Chronic Pain Support Group.
A lot of it is food that we eat but if you don’t eat you get skinny I lost 25 pounds not good I’ve gained about 7 pounds back by eating more but of course, having more pain
Mine was caused by my lower spine surgery...fusion and laminectomy.
I forgot to mention the side effect of gabapentin is gout is a calcium blocker so the calcium goes to your bones. Causes gout. Gout in my big toe got worse. Now I need to have it removed and Lyrica is a lot stronger. I cannot even take it any longer I have to get off gabapentin was better to take for my pain than Lyrica.
When I first got shingles in 2019 I tried a lot of stuff in it up on gabapentin. I was on 2400 mg a day. I finally got down when I finally quit. I was on 900 a day you have to get off very slowly. I’m glad I did, they say Lyrica is even harder to get off of but I haven’t been on that long enough. It really made my pain worse.
I feel lucky it gave me crazy psycho dreams and I quit
After two days.
It's not the Drs it's the Dentists!
I am taking 300 MG capsules 3x per day.
About a year ago I started seeing a new doc who prescribed the max 1800MG per day (300 MG 6 times per day). I lost ALL muscle strength. Could not even crawl! I stopped taking all Gabapentin and this side effect (ataxia) went away.
I am now seeing another neurologist and informed him about my history. Gabapentin is helpful to me in lower doses and I have not noticed any side effects (other than constipation). I looked up the clinical trials of Gabapentin and ataxia is mentioned as a possible side effect. Now I research the clinical trials of any FDA approved drug that I am prescribed!
Wow…. that was a heavy dosage regime. I took it and I could have slept around the clock. So I took it at night but it gave me wacko psycho dreams .. stuff you don’t even want to know is lurking in your brain. I just stopped it.
I took Gabapentin after a hip replacement. When the dosage ramped up,my thoughts went very dark.
I weaned down immediately.
I know what you are saying. I can't imagine 1800 mg of Gabapentin on a daily basis. My neurologist upped my dosage to 300 mg 3x daily. I eventually cut that back to 150 mg. 3x daily. I, also, tend to get very sleepy after dinner, often falling a sleep during a movie. It could also be the diazepam that I am taking. I may try to wean myself off both of these meds since I had a pain pump implanted. The pump doesn't give great relief, but I'd like to know if the meds are really helping after 7 years.