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Is Kindling Permanent?

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Willow60

Greenlighter
Joined
Jun 21, 2021
Messages
15
HI Everyone? I think I'm kindling and am wondering if this is a permanent state. I can not seem to stabilize at my current dose no matter how long I wait. It has been 4 months since cutting my Gabapentin too fast and I am still in a state of distress everyday. I wonder if I wait long enough, will I start to eventually feel better and then resume my taper or am I stuck with this feeling forever? Please help!
 
Do you have any underlying issues that could be causing you distress? I find it hard to understand why you're having so much trouble getting off of such a small amount of gabapentin. Are you trying to taper off or just be stable on it?
 
Wanted to comment, in your other thread Gabapentin Taper I think @Just a little pinprick (which I think is the best forum name I have ever seen lol) gave some real soiid advice. The poly drug use is pertinent. I have to say I really do thinking mixing gaba drugs like benzos and gabapentin create a whole new dependency that is not fully understood yet.

Feel better Willow. Slow and steady. There are for sure members that have dependencies on several drugs and coming off is never pleasant. But the slower the better.

In answer to the question is kindling permanent the answer is yes with some of the gaba drugs. Opiates too but not as bad. I imagine the brain gets use to a lot of things.
 
How long have you been taking gabapentin and at what doses? You will get through this, have faith.
 
deficiT, thank you for your help. I think it's because my original psychiatrist told me to take it as needed..."to play with the dosage to see what works best", so I went up and down between 100 and 300 mg and then got off those very rapidly with what I thought was ease, but now that I look back I was going through a very difficult benzo taper and I wonder if it was because of this and not the benzo taper.
Then my Nurse Practitioner suggested I try "just" 100 mg for sleep so I gave in and when I was ready to come off of it, I dropped by 25% the first week and 50% the second week. I had a horrific experience which really shocked me because I was expecting it to be easy. I was severely suicidal. I bumped my dose back up to 75 and haven't felt normal since. That was four months ago and is why I think I'm kindling.
I'm just at the point of giving up and going back to 100 mg. I'm having severe anxiety among other things and simply can't cope with it and work full time. Oh, and I've not tried to taper again because I was trying to get stable before I resumed it at a much slower pace.
 
JackARoe, I agree, "just a little pinprick," is a great name and was VERY helpful to me! Thanks for your encouragement. I sure hope you're right about getting used to it. I just can't take this much longer. I've lost friends, family is not supportive and I'm having a very difficult time managing my home and work life.
 
Not in my opinion/experience but we will all have different mileage.
;)
May take some years before all gets back to zen but it does, i think
 
Deficit, you asked about underlying issues. I have POTS which in case you don't know is a disorder of the autonomic nervous system. I think it could be having an effect on my taper. The symptoms of it are very similar to symptoms from tapering off meds.
 
ibitisam, you're right about drs not knowing what kindling is and it's so frustrating. They also say gabapentin doesn't cause withdrawals but it definitely does in some people. I like your analogy of the loan.
 
Willow60 said:
It has been 4 months since cutting my Gabapentin too fast
Click to expand...
I posted to the title without reading the content, sorry.

How long were you at the higher doses? What dose were you at?
This may be a factor in all this... possibly. I mean, if I were to drop a year long high-dose use in half suddenly and at once, it would without doubt cause some imbalance that would take some time to recover from.
Is it possible to up the dose for a couple weeks? Maybe add 1/4 - 1/2 of what was removed from the equation 4 months ago? If it is an option and you become more "stable", tapering more slowly and at a less drastic drop may help.
 
I think 99% of the withdrawal is in your head. Try not to think of dropping and you may not notice.
 
Jennn said:
I think 99% of the withdrawal is in your head. Try not to think of dropping and you may not notice.
Click to expand...
Gabapentinoid withdrawal indeed happens in the head, in the brain to be specific, but it's fucking real. Feels like any other narcotic.

I found this thread over the search, I was thinking about whether kindling in regard to tolerance and withdrawal is an onedirectional process where every use adds a little to, or if after some time one can use again. I've been on morphine for 3 years, stopped with memantine, waited a few months and now use kratom but found that while it doesn't trigger full withdrawal like when I missed more than a day of morphine back then, there IS some instant w/d activity even after just 1x 5g kratom which isn't usual. As I only had access to morphine (no H, poor bioavailability), prescribed, so I took them orally and withdrawal didn't set in like in H users but was a slow build-up over a few days. Never made it through though, always took either pregabalin or memantine to alleviate stuff. I thought kindling to be related to withdrawal as that every iterance will become worse than the previous but does it also happen to tolerance?
 
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