I have been using gabapentin for years occasionally. I also have a bottle of pregabalin. I usually always reach for the gabapentin. Don’t get me wrong I love pregabalin but I can’t go over 300 mg because the side effects make me feel very strange in my head. Almost feels electrical. But it hits much harder and quicker than gabapentin. However I find gabapentin has a nicer deep down relaxing effect and I sleep better. So to me they’re not exactly the same. I also find phenibut different from both. My tolerance to these is still nice and low. 2100 mg of gabapentin is plenty for many hours of comfortability. And I assume it helps my nerve pain too.
I wish we knew more about gabapentinoids. The way they can feel stimulating, sedating, and trippy is very interesting. It’s definitely becoming a class of drug that certainly was discarded 30 to 40 years ago. I had a friend who got OxyContin as well as Neurontin and in the 90’s but we discarded the Neurontin as not worthy. And here we are many years later and it is becoming its own class with its own effects. I do remember asking my friend if he takes them and he did so maybe he did find some use for them. And this friend has long passed and this black light remembrance
Edit: I keep forgetting to say that gabapentin is way more euphoric than benzos for me. But I only view benzos as something to sleep on, or come down from something. Put it this way, you can take gabapentin and go out dancing if that is what you do. I just don’t see benzos the same way. They seem to dull everthing. And only when I want things dulled are the handy. But I for sure would not take a benzo and go to a concert, but I would with gabapentin.