Hi Annie,

AFAIK, I'm one of the few here who gets on fine with gabapentin, but I take very small doses. Many people were on it a while back, and then switched to topomax. Then side-effects from the topo (hair-loss, bad taste in mouth, whatall) seems to have caused some to come off that.

So I don't know what the "drug de jour" is right now.

I was put on Neurontin right away, 900mgs pd in 3x300mg doses. One thing I've noticed (I'm a Brit living in Hong Kong where the med system follows the UK) is that UK prescribed doses of all meds are much smaller than US. I'd already joined BT1 so I knew what others were taking and thought hey, why've I got such mini amounts?

Well, I took the first lot...and seriously felt like I'd dropped a bit of acid. Sparkly lights, the works! Couldn't remember a damn thing and felt like I lived in a cloud. I seem to be very sensitive to it. So, not being able to cope like that, I reduced it and now, on 500 - 600 mgs pd, it works fine. I've tried coming right off it, but find I do need it. It doesn't remove the pain, but it calms the zaps and pushes it all into the background.

Main things that have been reported are: intense brain fog, raging appetite, weight gain and memory loss.

Memory loss for me is the most serious - mine ain't what it used to be, sometimes worryingly so, but then I *am* getting older.

So...I know Neurontin is the older form of gabapentin, newer forms are pregabalin (UK) and Lyrica - there are certainly people here taking the latter, and some newer forms are around too, in Europe at least.

I'm very interested myself to find out what the state of play is on this - hope you get good feedback on this one,
all the best.