Esme,
Keep up the good work your tapering off the Lyrica. Early in my days of spinal pain after my fusion; a Pain Management doctor put me on Lyrica and Cymbalta. After only a couple of weeks on the Lyrica, I felt like bugs were biting my legs; I stopped the Lyrica even tho the doctor kept after me to keep on taking it. Stopped Cymbalta as well, I felt like a "zombi".

Wish you all the best on completing your withdrawal.


Gerry

Hello all... I am new on here and am wondering if anyone has any experience on long-lasting or lingering effects of Lyrica after successfully weaning from it? I am not even sure I am posting this question in the correct area!

A little background info...I was in an MVA in 2007 with multiple fractures including C1, C3, C5 and burst fractures of T6&T8 including many of the spiny processes from T4-L1. (This is a short list of my injuries, but the most significant ones that cause my lingering chronic pain.) After various narcotics for almost a year, I successfully weaned from Fentanyl 75mcg/patch every three days, oxycotin, and oxycodone with minor withdrawal symptoms due to a very slow weaning process.

After continued nerve pain from the burst T6&T8 (compressed vertebrae), I was started on neurotin and had severe brain fog, so I was switched to Lyrica 75 mg three times a day for a total daily dose of 225mg a day. Little did I know that my brain fog lifted only for a short time and has now over five years progressively gotten worse on the Lyrica. I've also had problems with word finding, sentence pauses, memory issues, extreme weight gain even with exercise, name recall, extreme tiredness to the point of failing a multiple latency sleep study. I am in the process of weaning off the Lyrica very slowly to hopefully prevent any of the known and unknown withdrawal symptoms.

My question is this... Can anyone give me any insight into how long it takes for the brain fog to lift after successfully withdrawing and stopping the Lyrica? Will my memory return to normal when I am off the Lyrica? If so, how long have others taken to normalize? I just need to know or be reassured that my brain will start working again! If I would have known how bad my brain fog was going to get I doubt I would have given Lyrica a trial run which ended up lasting five-plus years.

Thanks to anyone that has any insight to add!
Kindly....
Karen

Hi Karen

Welcome to NeuroTalk .

I can't directly help you but if you describe your experiences in the TBI/PCS forum (https://www.neurotalk.org/forum92/) as well members who contribute to it may also be able to help you.

All the best,

I will probably be taking Lyrica for the rest of my life. For 2 reasons. First and foremost, it truly does help me, there has been a significant amount of pain loss since I started it 5 years ago. Secondly I recently ran out due to a prior auth issue with my insurance and had none at all for two weeks, and I literally wanted to die. I could NOT deal with the discontinuation syndrome plus the return of the pain. I won't got into all my issues other than to say my pelvis was crushed in a car accident and rebuilt, and without Lyrica I have a severe tail-bone pain that is just unbearable. Add to that the freezing and sweating, diarrhea, bloating and depression and I was seriously suffering. I finally got it again today two hours ago, took a double dose and one of my reg pain meds, and now I'm almost 100% again.

When I first started taking it, I felt drunk, it was horrible, but then I quit taking it during the day, just taking it like a couple hours before bedtime and then again when hubby gets up to go to work at 4am. I'm sleeping off the side effects.

For me personally the benefits outweigh the risks, it keeps me off the heavy heavy pain meds and as long as I can get it I'll be ok. THIS time, I'm going to save some back, that way if this ever happens again maybe I'll be ok.

I do feel for those of you going through the w/d from this. It IS real, it DOES exist. I just wish I had more words of comfort to offer.

God Bless you all.

I just want to say thank you so much for this thread! I am currently trying to get off of gabapentin and having terrible withdrawal symptoms (many of which are similar to those you've listed, such as terrible hot flashes/sweats). My doc had also prescribed Lyrica so I wondered if switching to it would help me with gabapentin withdrawal. Now I see it would be going from the 'frying pan into the fire'. Thank you so much for saving me from a bad decision!!

For those suffering from neuropathy/pain, I highly recommend you look into PEA (PeaPure), a supplement with NO side effects that really works!

Thanks for this post triviafriend.

Yep, I went through it too (for RSD and DDD)... and had all of those horrid symptoms as well. I also got some severe rashes on top of bloat, foggy, dizzy, depression... My doctor said nothing about withdrawal being worse than the side-effects, but they were until I was put on Neurontin, a sister drug, and the S/E (side-effects) stopped. What trial and error this process is..and we are all different in how we respond to any drug or treatment...

Prayers for us that we help each other to find what can work!
May you be painfree!!

Hana

I'm back on my regular Lyrica dose (400 mg per day). My withdrawal pain wasn't any different than fibromyalgia pain, with a couple of different effects. I was reducing because i lost 80 pounds and I'm reducing on all my meds. Not my Dr's decision, we decided together.
I've already reduced two psychotropic drugs with no problem and they're supposed to be the worst. Lyrica has been a godsend for me and I stopped reducing my dose because it wasn't worth it for now. I've already talked to the Dr.s office and I'm going to go on to my next planned reduction after I recover from again the fibro setback.

Just to tell everyone Lyrica can be great , I would have been a wreck without it. I will get my dosage down. I've read a lot of smart things here that will help next time. I'm just going to work on other drug reductions and then go back and take my time with Lyrica. Hope that helps someone! dusty

Hello dusty7949,

I just wanted to welcome you to the NeuroTalk Support Groups.

Welcome dusty7949.

Hi TriviaFriend,

I have just joined this forum, because I was looking for answers for why I have been feeling so unwell this past 3 weeks. I tapered off slowly, but possibly not slowly enough.
It has been helpful to me see that many of the symptoms that I have been going through are listed by others.
My understanding was that symptoms would be milder than they have been and would take no more than a week to get through.
But clearly everyone is different.

My Symptoms include:

Exhaustion, coupled with insomnia (horrible combination)
Depression
Extreme episodes of sweating
Chills
Inability to regulate temperature
Headache
Nausea
Muscle aches
Short of breath
Lack of desire to socialize
Mood swings

Thanks so much to all for your interesting information