Question about pregabalin being recreational

[Op8N8]

Hello everyone, op8n8 here with another question about lyrica (and/or gabapentin). I for one think that pregabalin and gabapentin have a decent amount of abuse potential, although it seems that not everyone shares my views on this. I am curious as to how/why some of you do not find these drugs recreational. I've even heard them be likened to benadryl and other antichollinergics! I couldn't disagree more. Although they (or at least gabapentin) are admittedly less consistent with dosing than other recreational drugs tend to be i.e. alprazolam, I would, without hesitation, trade the reliability of drugs like alprazolam or other commonly abused meds for the incredible tactile enhancement and unique euphoria that drugs like pregabalin and gabapentin offer (at least if talking about using recreationally and not medicinally). I guess what I'm really wondering is why those of you who don't find them recreational don't and whether or not you think these type of drugs are going to be one of the drugs that our children will be abusing one day. Also if anyone could explain their mechanism of action a little better for me or possibly name a few other drugs that act upon voltage gated channels.

 

[edgewise1]

I'm prescribed 450mgs of Lyrica daily. I find that, by itself, it gives me a mood lift and virtually turns off the burning pain in my legs. But to continue getting that mood lift i have to up my dose, while the burning is stopped with my regular dose.

Where I find Lyrica to come into its own is the synergy between it and my narcotics. Does a GREAT job there!

 

[Freon]

Lyrica is one of those drugs along with Wellbutrin, Zoloft, neurontin, etc that is sort of in a grey area in terms of being recreational. Most people say no they have no rec. effects while a minority of others say it does have some rec. effects. The only way to find out is to try it. Personally, I tried taking 250mg of Zoloft one time and got a sort of speedy feeling that others have described. So who knows?

 

[theedeadmau5]

the problem with lyrica and neurontin is that your tolerance will increase very rapidly with chronic use. after a week or two of taking this drug everyday, don't expect it to give you same effect you obtained the first time you tried it. with that said, with the right dosage this drug can be effective in terms of recreation. i've discovered that the "high" feeling you get from lyrica doesn't come until after the sedation effect.

 

[lightbrigade]

I'm a big fan of pregabalin. I can't speak for anyone else, but I find it very recreational when abused. I went on my most recent Lyrica spree at the end of month, and by the end of day 3, after consuming over 4g over the course of 10 hours or so, I was legitimately hallucinating. It's probably a good thing that it's the most ludicrously priced prescription I've ever had... since my pdoc started me on it in 2007, I have never been able to fill more than 5 of my 12 yearly prescriptions. When you weigh the price against the potency/power of the stuff, it's really not worth it. A lot of fun though. By the way, for the sake of harm reduction: I wouldn't advise anyone (especially those naive to to the risks and effect) to take doses as high as I just described... I know my use of pregabalin is reckless, albeit not exactly as dangerous as most drugs.

 

[theedeadmau5]

I'm a big fan of pregabalin. I can't speak for anyone else, but I find it very recreational when abused. I went on my most recent Lyrica spree at the end of month, and by the end of day 3, after consuming over 4g over the course of 10 hours or so, I was legitimately hallucinating. It's probably a good thing that it's the most ludicrously priced prescription I've ever had... since my pdoc started me on it in 2007, I have never been able to fill more than 5 of my 12 yearly prescriptions. When you weigh the price against the potency/power of the stuff, it's really not worth it. A lot of fun though. By the way, for the sake of harm reduction: I wouldn't advise anyone (especially those naive to to the risks and effect) to take doses as high as I just described... I know my use of pregabalin is reckless, albeit not exactly as dangerous as most drugs.

agree with the price point, and even though we aren't supposed to talk about prices, i think it's important for people to know that this shit isn't cheap, even with good insurance.

 

[Op8N8]

Lightbrigade, may I ask what your hallucinations consisted of? I saw so where else on this site I believe, that someone else was seeing the whole "grid of rainbow dots" vision thing similar to some dissociatives. Were your hallucinations more traditional-psychedelic-like or more dissociativesque?

 

[VitamaN]

I'll keep it fairly short winded. Gabapentin got me high once and never again. It did have therapeutic properties as far as depression/withdrawal symptoms but that was short lived and the bio availability is garbage. Staggering a drug is an annoying method of ingestion .
Now, Lyrica, expensive ass Lyrica, . Lately I've been eating 900 mg's and the highs have been semi-intense with bouts of energy and closed eye visuals. Definitely not a placebo effect , and it lasts a LONG time. At night I want it to end sometimes and it just keeps kicking on and on. The first time I did Lyrica I started at 300MG and couldnt figure out if I liked it or not. It had an energy to it. Some people get tired on it. Not me. I have crazy good sex on it but it was just kinda dirty feeling the first time I did it. I guess once I got a lil used to it the highs got better as I got more familiar and my brain adapted to the chemical. It's a weird drug though. Sometimes it just doesn't work at all no matter how many I eat (unlike opes and benzos). Gotta take vacations from it for sure.

 

[brink]

Lyrica compares well with phenibut from my experience. Not sure if coordination issues are as pronounced on higher doses of Lyrica, as I haven't tried. The quick tolerance, shitty withdrawal, and anecdotes of dental issues are enough for me to abstain from messing with the GABA system altogether, aside from having an occasional drink.

 

[pamster]

Hey all, I am prescribed 400mg of pregabalin daily. I am on this medicine since Dec 2012. Tried coming off it with no success I am completely and utterly reliant on it, it has taken over my life. I get double prescriptions and have been caught so right now I'm running out of spares and will have to stick to what I am precribed, I neeed at least 1,200mg to get the high I am chasing all of the time. Today, as I speak I have consumed 1,600mg and about eight tylex (codeine 30mg). Recreationally I would need 2,000mg to get the euphoric high I constantly chase. I blame doctors for prescribing it to me for drug withdrawals initally I also blame my addictive personality..... this drug costs me a lot of money.

 

[pamster]

I do take breaks when I reduce it as I am unable to take complete breaks because I'd die if I had none...

 

[Corazon]

Taking 'breakthrough' doses of gabapentin or lyrica fucks with the chemical balance in your brain.

It is not harmless, it does cause tolerance and change. There seems to be an idea by some (not all) that these drugs are perfectly safe. The literature that I've seen also doesn't address recreational high-dose use.

 

[Toz]

Taking 'breakthrough' doses of gabapentin or lyrica fucks with the chemical balance in your brain.

It is not harmless, it does cause tolerance and change. There seems to be an idea by some (not all) that these drugs are perfectly safe. The literature that I've seen also doesn't address recreational high-dose use.

These drugs are not perfectly safe (though what drug is?). They are carcinogens that cause severe physical dependance. They can also permanently damage vision even when used in prescribed dosages.

That being said I do find lyrica and gabapentin to be mildly recreational. It's one step above benzos and several steps below everything else in my oppinion. They also block dopamine release from the nucleus accumbens so they reduce the effects of most other drugs and can cause depression when used daily.

I am certainly not a fan but I am forced to take lyrica every day for pain so I try to make the best of it. At least it gives me 2 good hours before causing cognitive impairment for the rest of the day. Unfortunately for me I built tolerance to the positive effects while the side effects remained the same.

 

[MrRoot]

Well it is recreational if some considers it to be recreational if you feel energetic and "normal" just like those days when you did not have any addictions or cravings for drug induced high...

I guess that is what lyrica does. It makes you feel normal for a while.

 

[pally pete]

Pregabalin is good for general Anxiety at a dose of around 2 x 300mg per day but tolerance builds fast (IME) Although all it takes is a break for a few days and your tolerance drops rapidly. At higher doses (750mg - 1500mg) it's great for Opiate withdrawal.

It seems to extinguish all the withdrawal symptoms apart from the Diarrhea.

As for recreational use... It's a strange one. I gave some to a friend who had no tolerance, I think he may of only had 150 - 300mg the first time and he Loved it. He named it Ket-Amphetamine :D As he said the experience was like a cross between taking Ketamine and an Amphetamine. Very wobbly yet hightened energy.

 

[MrRoot]

It actually does not have to be that huge dose for opiate WDs. Trick is to start taking lyrica at smaller doses before you start tapering off. I am at sixth day of absence from multimonth daily use of Oxycontin as prescribed and two to three times of recreational use per week and I currently take 150mg of Lyrica twice a day and had not noticed any WD symptoms except slight diarrhea.

 

[lightbrigade]

Op8N8,
Sorry for the late reply. The hallucinations were more like sleep deprivation hallucinations than visuals from psychedelics. I was at an AA meeting (the irony isn't lost on me) and I glanced to my left and saw a girl holding a beer bottle (very clearly saw this). I did a double-take and saw she wasn't holding anything. Hallucinations/visual-disturbances like this continued for about an hour. This was at a dose above 3g (approximately) throughout the day.

 

[Dresden]

Gabapentin and pregabalin are, on their own, a +/- for me. I can take them or leave them. However, they are nowhere near as reinforcing/addictive as the classics: (meth)amphetamine, marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and Mdxx. The reason I don't particularly like them is that they are downers, and I only use downers to go to sleep. I like uppers better. Also, 30mg of claritin (loratidine) works harder to put me to sleep each night than either my gabapentin or hydroxyzine. One time I took like 6 lyricas at the same time and felt happy and confident for a minute, but the fact that pregabalin/lyrica is Schedule 5, with 5 being the least abusable of the controlled substances, should tell you something. That is, it is not that good.

 

[lightbrigade]

Gabapentin and pregabalin are, on their own, a +/- for me. I can take them or leave them. However, they are nowhere near as reinforcing/addictive as the classics: (meth)amphetamine, marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and Mdxx. The reason I don't particularly like them is that they are downers, and I only use downers to go to sleep. I like uppers better. Also, 30mg of claritin (loratidine) works harder to put me to sleep each night than either my gabapentin or hydroxyzine. One time I took like 6 lyricas at the same time and felt happy and confident for a minute, but the fact that pregabalin/lyrica is Schedule 5, with 5 being the least abusable of the controlled substances, should tell you something. That is, it is not that good.

600mg of pregabalin is a therapeutic dose. Recreational effects manifest with higher doses and/or an alternate ROA to oral, such as IV. I can tell you from my experience, pregabalin in doses between about 1.5g and 5g, produces recreational effects, becoming profoundly more sedating/debilitating/disorienting, psychedelic, anxiolytic, and amnesic ad dosage increases into the range of multiple grams. The problem at hand is that research on pregabalin's recreational value is very, very new and limited; and the research that is available can be a bit dodgy (like a meta-analysis of user reports on sites like this).

 

[VitamaN]

Ya it's a 5 but it might work its way up eventually. It's just not very well known in the medical world that it's abused. My friend is a highly accredited anesthesiologist and he said to me "That's an anticoagulant why the hell are you taking that?" ...
um, cuz it's kinda bad ass when you "abuse" it