--carry with them the warning to titrate down from them VERY slowly.

Their mechansims of action is such that they "deaden" the over-responsiveness of the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nerves. The body senses this and attempts to "upregulate" its normal background neural firing rate in response. If the meds are withdrawn too quickly, without giving the body time to "downregulate" again, this increased background fring rate comes to the fore, and anything at the end of a nerve seems to go into hyperdrive--neural pain receptors, sense organs, musculature, even sometimes bowel and bladder function . . .and, of course, sleep/wakefulness cycles may be disrupted.

I'm currently in the process of titrating down from Gabapentin. From my high of 2400mg/day two years ago, I'm down to 600mg/day. But I've been dong this for 18 months now; I drop down about 100mg/day at a time, monitor the effects, let my body readjust/stabilize at that level for at least a week or so, and then still wait further before the next drop. Even so, I've noticed short upticks in neural pain at some drop levels, thought these tend to fade over days as the body readjusts.

Any doc who wants people to drop down these meds quickly should know better. They're not the only meds that have to be titrated down slowly, but there've certainly been enough reports on the effects of NOT doing it that nobody should even suggest otherwise.