Originally Posted by Kdj13

I'm so glad I found this forum. It felt like I was losing all control of my life and its direction while going off Lyrica but knowing that there is an end in sight is giving me hope to keep going.

I, like many on this forum, had decided several weeks ago that Lyrica was causing side effects that I no longer felt were worth the amount of relief of the nerve pain I am suffering from a back injury.

I had worked up to a dose of 150 mg in the morning and 150 mg in the evening by the beginning of my third month on this drug but I'm of very small stature. 5 ft 2 in and a little less than 100 lbs. It wasn't long into the third month where I was starting to feel the side effects. Just to name a few, insomnia, depression, changes in mood, diminished functioning in both my body and mind, constantly feeling short of breath even though my O2 would be within an acceptable range, changes in appetite, nausea, diarrhea, changes in vision...it was just going badly...the worst part was that I had no idea why it was happening. I couldn't quantify these conditions and I didn't know it was the Lyrica causing it until I really paid attention to the commercial for it. I am lucky enough to have a very supportive girlfriend who recognized it for what it was as well as a psychologist who suggested Lyrica was the culprit behind these things.

A week ago, I started to bring my doses down to a 150 mg per day and only if I legitimately could not tolerate the withdrawal. I'm on my 4th day of no Lyrica. The first two days of no Lyrica, I was thrown into full fledged withdrawal with the likes of those heroine addicts in movies. Cold sweat, burning up under the covers but freezing without them, delirious dreams if I even fell asleep for a minute, chills, nausea, vomiting, tossing and turning in pain and agony the whole time. I couldn't keep down water and I couldn't even think about food. I spent all of yesterday in the ER hooked up to an IV (had 3 liters total), had some morphine to take the edge off of my desperation, some zofran to take the edge off the nausea and tolerated a little bit of food by the end of it.

I am not nearly as bad a condition today thanks to all the fluids they pumped into me and I went to the pain management doctor who had put me on Lyrica. I was absolutely amazed at the level of his dismissals of my claims. He said that Lyrica barely had a 24 hour half life and that it wasn't a narcotic so there's no way my body could be going through what it's going through due to it. He said that the Lyrica has been long gone out of my system and of the thousands of patients that are successfully on Lyrica, I was the first one who claims these things. He said that it had to be some other underlying condition that is causing these symptoms.
I feel as if I'm tight roping over hell going through this wicked withdrawal and for him to spit on my misery was just unbearable. He was decent enough at the end of it to write a script for zofran so I can continue to keep myself hydrated enough to survive but I'm just at a point where I need to know that the end of this suffering is near. Anyone out here have an idea when the sun will break through the clouds for me?