I've been on gabapentin for about a year. It does help me a great deal. The down side for me have been the memory problems, the weight gains, and having to go up in dosage every several months. It works better for me than Lyrica did. I think both have the dizzy adjustment period. As others have said, it depends on the person. Good Luck.

Hi COW109,

We have a very active and interesting PN Forum here:

http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/forum20.html

I can assure you of a warm welcome there if you have issues with your SFN.

Dave.

Hi Pam,

I tried so many medications for my nerve pain. Most of them either did not help or I got side effects and had to go of them.

I hope the gabapentin works for you and helps your pain.

I'm on 2700 mg Gabapentin. I have heavy duty nerve pain over most of my body. I think as others have said it's a really individual thing. For me it has reduced some of the nerve pain so it's worth it. It does affect me cognitively and I've had to lower the dose recently. Very few meds help me so I'm happy to accept a little help even if I may not be quite as alert as before. Good luck in your decision making ( :

I am taking Gabapentin 300 mg 3x daily, with good results. At night I have break-though shooting pain in my left leg\foot.

Is the Gabapentin for your teeth problem or something else ..... I took for a little while and gained a lot of weight so got off of it . it did help with nerve pain but not weight gain.. I then changed to Keppra for nerve pain..

Yes there seems to be several common themes -
-Every person has a unique experience
-Physical and mental side effects that can't be predicted
-Dosages generally increase over time.

My experience is that my doc and I have to switch meds every so often (~15-24 months) to get the same effect. Side effects vary from dizziness and even "visual effects" to depression, and muscle spasms.

[B]Been taking Gab for about 9 months now. Am also taking 2 muscle relaxants & morphine for pain from 2 back surgeries. Added Gab as an alternative to increasing opioid. Has worked well for me. Doc told me to tough out any non severe side effects for a week After that the side effects seemed to disappeared & I felt markedly better. I'm sure it was a better choice than increasing pain meds. Let us know how things are going.

Congratulations to anyone who was helped by Gabapentin. My wife took it on Doc's orders to control her Peripheral Neuropathy but had a really bad reaction so we had to drop it.
She took half of a prescribed 300 unit pill and when I went to check on her, (she was sitting in her chair"), she said she was freezing so I got a blanket and a heating pad and set her up. A few minutes later I went to check on her and the heating pad and blanket were on the floor and she was still shaking. I said, what happened? She said, "I don't know" and was really unable to communicate rationally. Zonked out completely. Couldn't get out of the chair or walk so with the help of a very strong Son and a lot of effort we got her into bed.
Needless to say, no more Gabapenten. I guess it helps some but not my wife for sure ! Now we are trying a plant based diet and CBD to help her. Just started the diet so we shall see if that helps. I sure hope something does because the nerve pain just takes away your quality of life. Nice to be here to compare notes. Regards , Geovani !

Hi! I`m new to the group, but not with the NP.
I have NP in my feet for 4-5 years. I started with Gabapentin 4 years ago, and it worked good for the first year or so. The problem with Gaba is the tolerance.
Now, 4 years later, I still use it, but I can`t feel any relief any longer. At one time I decided to stop taking it, and I managed to do so, after 1 very hard year of tapering. It is horrible physically addictive. Just a few days later, the pain went trough the roof, so I went back to 900 mg 3 time a day again. It got better, but at times the pain was still unbearable in my feet.
I also take Amytriptaline 50 mg pr. day. But I am worried that it affect my cognitive abilities.
The big breaktrough for me was when my doctor 3 months ago put me on 20 mg Methadone once a day. Now, finally, I feel I can focus on other things than the pain in my feet. I pray that the tolerance is low, (very long half life) so I can stay at this dosage for the duration.
I know I need medication to be able to live with this, and all of them is addictive one way or the other. But at 64 I`m not so worried about that. The most important is to have a good quality of life. I have also heard about one week infusions of small dosages of Ketamin. It is supposed to be the best. Let`s face it: we will have to live with this curse the rest of our lives.