My vet has prescribed it for our dog’s pain relief.
This drug is the only drug I can take for nerve pain.You should get used to 1 pill 4 X a day w/o driving until you can tolerate it’s tendency to cause tiredness. Do not listen to these VA clowns who want people on 16 pills a day. See a good neurosurgeon. Lyrica is the other option. It can/will cause crazy thoughts.
I’m uninsured so I shopped around. Prices were all over the radar screen - 35-50 dollars.
I purchased my gabapentin at costco. 300mg, 90 pills was only $7.49.
My doctor prescribed gaba and tramadol for an undiagnosed pain I’m having in my left hip (extreme pain), much lesser pain in my lower back and sciatia.
The pain is unbearable at times and I only get nominal relief from the meds.
I just started taking it for Sciatica. I’m on my third day of 3 x daily. So far, no side effects. Also, no relief. Physical therapy hasn’t done squat either.
I tried it a year ago for Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy.
I was hoping it would work because Lyrica is so expensive!
I was okay for about two weeks, then I woke up one morning looking like Yoda, my eyes were almost swollen shut, and I had bad edema in my legs!
I was horrified!
It took about another two weeks to get back to normal.
That being said, many many people take it with good result, so don’t worry! I found that it did not do much for my pain, so I am back on Lyrica.
I am wishing you all the best!
It also helped my other condition of PN—as my Primary Physician said it would. He'd previously suggested ropinirole hcl, which irked me in some unreportable fashion. (I asked to be off it) A NP (Nurse Practitioner) suggested 300mg gabapentin eight hours apart for the RLS. It's been 1½ years, with no bad side effects, except I'm not getting good REM sleep, and spend about 5 hours a night thinking I'm sleeping.
I'm also on clopidogrel and metoprolol tartrate. Unrelated to the above, also famotidine.
Wasn't there a previous discussion here on gabapentin?
I’m a 3 time board-certified family physician and I have peripheral sensorimotor neuropathy and RSD (aka Complex Regional pain Syndrome). My days, and nights, are, well, entertaining, to say the least.
I’ve been prescribing this stuff for decades. gabapentin, pregabalin, topiramate, duloxetine, nortriptyline, as well as suggesting other treatments like cucurmin, turmeric, valerian root (nothing says “natural herbal medicine” quite like the scent of old gym socks), capsaicin topical and more, or less, depending on the times, medicine being as much art as it is science, I do try and practice evidence-based medicine as much as possible.
pregabalin (Lyrica) made me so “loopy” I couldn’t concentrate; patient to patient I’d forget what I was doing, have to refer to the chart in hand, I was having “word-finding” issues and felt hung over for the most part. This lasted about a month. Did it help modulate any of the pain? barely.
gabapentin, started at 100mg at bedtime for a week, then 200mg then just 300mg a day, seemed to be taking the edge off my pain, the continuous burning in one foot was lessened to where I could really ignore it. I could also ignore other things as well, as I seemed to be losing my glasses, keys, coffee cup, patient charts more often than usual. I found myself one afternoon parked in front of a grocer’s with the sudden realization that I was there, didn’t know how I got there, what it was I wanted to buy - the shopping list on the pasenger seat was an obvious hint, but I didnt recognize the handwriting - this was scarier than anything I’ve ever experienced, including stomping along parts of the Ho Chi Minh trail dodging land mines for MIA/POW recovery missions or riding motorcycles around Europe, California and DC in my youth. I stopped taking that crap that day.
topiramate? just made me a little nauseated. Didn’t even put a dent in the symptoms.
nortriptyline? 10mg a night helped some, very noticeable, but I didn’t have a bowel movement for 3 days, then 5, then 7. I’ve played with it some, every other night dosing for example, but it literally puts my gut at a standstill.
The valerian tea works some, but the smell makes my wife sick.
Turmeric, cucurmin, nada.
I’m going in for some facet blocks in a week, going to get a second opinion from a neurosurgeon soon - first one wanted to cut, but I’ve seen the result of too many laminectory-foraminotomies-fusions and all that and think I may have another year or so before I need to decide if this is worth the trouble or just file for disability. Hard to do when I earn as much as I can, but I can’t afford to make mistakes or dosing errors, or pay any less attention to detail than suppressing/ignoring the pain already does.
I have an ongoing relationship with a physiatrist/pain specialist and go through about 30-60 percocet a month; orthopedics is doing viscosupplementation in my knees after years of cortisone and surgeries; neurology wants me taking the nortriptyline until I “get used to it” (fuck him and the ivory tower he rode in on), rheumatology is looking into some obscure connective tissue disorders, and I’ve asked all of them if the Lyme disease I had in 2000-2001 might have caused some, any, much of this.
The hemming and hawing was deafening.
Meanwhile, trazodone and percocet help me sleep - when the neuropathic pins/needles/railroad spikes don’t wake me.
Good luck.
It didn’t work for me. Maybe you will have better luck.
List of reported to the FDA side effects between 2004-2006:
Neurontin, 2,672 Distinct Adverse Reactions
All 2,672 Neurontin side effects are listed at link in alphabetical order.
http://psychroachesadverseevent.blogspot.com/2009/03/neurontin-adverse-reactions.html
Between 2004 and 2006 the FDA MedWatch program received 5,418 Individual Safety Reports naming Neurontin (gabapentin) the Primary Suspect Drug for 2,672 distinct adverse reactions including neoplasm, nephritis, neuritis, neurodermatitis, neurofibromatosis, neuroleptic malignant syndrome, neuroma, neutropenia, neutrophilia, night blindness, night cramps, nightmare, night sweats, nipple disorder and nystagmus.
The numbers of reported worst case side effects at the bottom are meaningless as there is no law requiring adverse reactions to be reported.
As such those numbers only represent, at best, maybe 5% of the actual occurances
I took it for nerve pain. For me, it did not help. Gained some weight (that was ok me being thin), dry mouth, and my ankles and feet swelled up. For me it was not helpful.
My chiro said she would be adding an inversion table for sciatica patients.
I bought one and it takes about a minute to fix the pain. You will be stretching your vertebrae which causes the pinching of the nerves (PAIN).
Note to ladies: these are set for your height however depending on your “chest” size you will need to add to your height or you may never come right side up-LOL!! You can but this makes it so much easier. My 5’3” is set for 5’6” and it’s much easier to come right side up.
If morphine isn’t getting it done, this ain’t gonna help.
I was on it for a couple of months for nerve pain. It didn’t work for me. Switched to amyltriptoline. (Sp?)
Good luck.
This quote from: https://www.medicinenet.com/gabapentin/article.htm
In 2014 I had my knees totally replaced, one at a time. At my two week doctor appointment I told my surgeon I was not sleeping well, even though the pain meds were working and he gave me a sample pack of this stuff. I used it for about two weeks and they somehow allowed me to sleep.
When I had my second knee replacement I asked him if he had any more and he gave me another sample pack and I again used it for about two weeks.
I had no adverse reactions even though I was taking relatively heavy doses of both Oxycontin and Oxycodone.
My daughter took it to reduce tremors in her hands. It worked but she gained 30 pounds so she stopped taking it.
My doctor had me taking this by the handful for leg pain resulting from spinal injury. I could never convince him that it wasn’t working. Finally, a pain management doctor prescribed Lyrica. Luckily, that has been effective for me. Good luck.
I don’t have sciatica .... it’s the same thing but with a different nerve. I’ve been on Gaba for 2 years now. I’ve had no side effects, but it’s only 10% effective for the pain. I’ve stayed on because of no side effects, and 10% is better than nothing. Steroid shots to the spinal cord are the only thing that works. I started with 3 month intervals and now I’m up to 5 months. Each shot lasts longer so I’m hopeful this is the way to go.
So you have sciatica. You can dull the pain, or expand the spine to increase the intercostal space that’s pinching the sciatic nerve. They can do a laser cut of the vertebra to create a channel, you can get an inflatable brace to expand the spine from the hips to the arm pits, you can get an inversion table to expand the spine in the morning, or get a tns to disrupt the pain signals to the brain. Likely you will want to use several to manage the pain and stop the damage.
Another friend was using it to "help her sleep" and was found several times on the floor in her own excrement before friends decided to try to have her committed 9she couldn't be held) and she finally decided to opt for recovery.
As with any of the modern drugs, they have both plus and minus sides and the pluses and minuses aren't evenly distributed among the population - keep a close watch on yourself and have others watching too.....just in case.
Good luck.