dgreen97: Tapering off 600mg gabapentin, down to 300mg in the morning

[dgreen97]

Hey guys,

 

first post on here, I was on benzobuddies before and finally got off klonopin on july 4th. My psych put me on gabapentin 600mg around sept 2013 I believe and now Im tapering this as well. He put me on it for anxiety. Right now Im feeling more muscle pain and tension, a lot more fatigue and some depression. What I did was switched from capsule to 600mg tablets a couple months ago and then started tapering my evening dose. At some point my doctor switched me to 300mg capsules once in the morning and once in the evening. So I switched to a 600mg tablet, cut it in half, and microtapered using a scale to come off the evening dose. Now Im at 300mg in the morning.

 

The question I have now is since the half life of this drug is so short, should I try to split the 300mg up into 3 doses, one for morning, evening and night or should I just leave it at 300mg in the morning and taper all the way down only taking the drug in the morning. I don't want to overcomplicate things, I just want to make this as painless as possible. If I split it into 3 doses, then I automatically cut off 200mg in the morning which will be like a cut. The other problem is that the tablet isn't symmetrical so I don't know how Im going to get it accurate for all three doses. I dont want to go the liquid route because I tried that with milk before on klonopin and didn't work out that well. However, if I stay at 300mg in the morning then like 7 hours later I already hit the half life and could feel the cut if there is going to be any side effects from it. What do you guys recommend?

[Petunia]

Welcome dgreen97,

I moved your introductory post to a Journal thread of its own. This way more people will notice it, and you can maintain your own journal.

 

Congratulations for getting off Klonopin, how did you taper? Did you experience withdrawal symptoms? It sounds like you may be having some withdrawal symptoms at the moment. Perhaps holding your current taper for a while to give your nervous system some time to settle might be a good idea.

 

Are you taking any other medications?

 

It would be great if you would put your drug and withdrawal history in your signature. Doing this helps people understand your context, it appears below each of your posts. Here are instructions for how to do it:

 

http://survivinganti...your-signature/

 

Here is a topic which may answer some of your questions:

 

Tips for tapering off Neurontin (gabapentin)

 

Petunia.

[dgreen97]

hey platinum

 

sorry i didn't respond to this after you posted, i got off of gabapentin on november 9th. been about 3 weeks since i got off and i think ive been getting hit with withdrawal the past week or so. dont know if this is possible or not, but been having more blurred/double vision, more muscle pain, fatigued, etc. would really appreciate some encouragement during this time to keep moving forward. i dont want to think that any of this is permament like the blurred/double vision or muscle pain.

 

the only medication i take now is 20mg of paxil, and im going to come off of that next but im waiting a little while. i just did 1.5 years of tapering, first klonopin and then gabapentin so i need a break. ill get my signature updated with my withdrawal info and the history with klonopin and gabapentin. 

 

i was on klonopin for about 5 1/2 years. almost the whole time i was on .5mg except for a few months after i had a major panic attack. i took 3mg for a short while then quickly started tapering back down again. i tapered down from 2mg back in may 2014 until july 4th 2015.

[Altostrata]

How are you doing, dgreen?