Well yeah I was on it for maybe 2 years the first run before I took a break, and quitting was hard but in a weird way. I mostly just got very depressed - sure also anxious but the depression was stronger, like worse in some ways than MDMA, and most of the withdrawal symptoms I actually did not felt to attribute to quitting pregabalin. I also did not have cravings, if anything I felt like not taking it (I have that from time to time with pregabalin). Sure there were also some funky physical effects I am not remembering the specifics of, maybe soreness / types of pain. But manageable.
Then again I wasn't doing great in general when I went through that.
So I think of it this way: feeling better for two years and paying two weeks of pure shit seems like an okay deal to me, especially since it somehow doesn't feel like coming off an addiction even though it clearly is a form of dependency.
But I will seek some support when I plan my next withdrawals, so that the 'pure shit' doesn't disrupt my functioning too much.
If you take it for a much shorter time I wouldn't worry about it a huge deal.
Coming off opioids also sucked balls - way more than the pregab - but the withdrawals weren't the biggest problem for me: it was the long winded shit that came after the initial withdrawal syndrome that I found killing. I might take opioids if the only price if it goes really badly would be the superflu-feelings for a week or something. Well ok not saying iv heroin, rather like oral oxy. OTOH the comfort of that state isn't worth becoming a shell of a man with piss poor willpower.
But everyone's different. Probably others find pregab more normally addictive perhaps. I have a similar thing with phenibut which is also a gabapentinoid: I have had 'habits' but they didn't escalate like the terrible things I sometimes read on BL.
I really wonder: if I didn't connect the withdrawal symptoms with withdrawing / with whether I was continuing or discontinuing.... then what bad days I might have had recently are a result of me going up and down with my daily pregabalin intake when i feel like it? I apparently don't feel off when I skip a day, even 2 or 3 or who knows how many until it starts getting shitty. I just miss the benefits of it. Similarly when I took a break from it for a while, I didn't crave it, I just got confronted with my life and problems being significantly more difficult when I don't take it.
I do get 'cravings' when I highly enjoy the effects and am 'on a roll' with things, just my dexamph and being generous with the pregabalin dosing... that just makes me want to do it again, but not terribly so. Neither do I chase those crazy highs you get from taking a high dose with low tolerance... it would fuck up the therapeutic effect and feels obviously wrong, also not worth enjoying just taking a slightly, reasonably high dose compared to the normal (150+ optional 75).
Do you take much higher doses for that pain?
Amazingly I still never abuse my dex. When I imagine what taking a high dose would be like, I just have 'sober' thoughts like "quite nice I bet, but with side-effects". I don't have wild fantasies despite having speeded often enough in the past.