Hi Groucho,

I have been on gabapentin for a year now. I initially started last October at 300mg 3x/day and within a month moved up to 4x/day spread evenly throughout the day. (I don't have trouble with pain at night while sleeping.) It works great for me with no side effects, for which I know I am lucky. My pain is exacerbated by too much walking, standing or other stress on my feet. When I am having a flare, I can tell when the doses wear off because I look at the clock and my next dose is usually due within the hour. However, I have also discovered the gabapentin to have a cumulative effect in that it loads up in your system and is more effective. I tried to go off it over the summer and successfully reduced my dosage for awhile, reducing by one pill every two weeks. But, it all caught up with me and after 3 weeks I was in horrible pain, I believe, because my overall system level finally caught up with the lower dosage I was taking daily. My psychiatrist explained to me about the system load and like he said, it took 7-10 days to start feeling better after I went back to 4x/day dosage. (Incidentally, the pharmacist told me it would only take 2-3 days to ramp up.) I will be paying attention to any tolerance build up with this drug, but so far so good. Hope this is helpful for you!