hey swilow appreciate the love thank you, thats actually really interesting about the cortisol. its crazy waking up first thing into some crazy panic, even if the physiological aspects of it subside fairly quickly its still impacting enough where it can take hours before I can snap out of the mood and doom impending thought process that brings about, I always try to ritualistically keep the first few hours of my day particularly calm or tranquil for that very reason as I believe the first few thoughts and actions in the day put in place the basic outline of the day, on a cognitive level anyways.
Agreed, and my experience with withdrawal and the morning crazies has inspired me to ease my way into waking life with tea instead of coffee, meditation for at least 20 minutes (I couldn't reccomend this more) or even some light exercise like a walk or something. I currently get morning anxiety (and am taking 450mg of pregabalin a day) but have developed tools to handle it better; and this is actually something that is becoming evidently beneficial.
Cortisol can impact blood sugar, I've found fruit juice in the morning pretty helpful.
I guess the only reason I'm even considering the klonipin, and really why I want to taper off with what gaba I have ( which is still about 6g's) rather than continuing refills is because I'm really getting no benefit from it, the negatives clearly out weight the positives for me no mood stabilizing effects or anxiolytic effect.besides staving off withdrawals caused directly by it there is no plus side. and with the severity I'm already feeling from the withdrawals I want to minimize exposure time.
I feel you, but if you rush it (like I did on my first attempts), it might not work. If you add say, one month or two more weeks of GBP use, that's not the end of the world.
I actually think part of gabapentinoid withdrawal is an anxious NEED to get off the drug.
also I feel as it has a fairly severe impact on my depression, I remember reading the warning labels at first and thinking I was lucky for not getting the suicidal thoughts/ depression part of the warning as I've heard stores of people taking it just once and immediately feeling those thoughts manifest. but over time I notice a distinct and particularly unique thought process that is very much in linear relation with the gabapentin usage. its much more pervasive than any anxiety from the benzos I was taking. I just have been through too much getting off serious opiate addictions to be so invested in a medicine that i still wake up sick from interdose withdrawals the next day from, you know ?. in fact, when I made the first lowering in my dose I noticed an improvement in sleep. once I got to 900mg gbp I was sleeping for 9 hours as opposed to the 6 hours I got on the 1200-2000 range. after working perservering through so much jumping cold turkey off methadone and suffering through all that, to still be on this ball and chain is rather sickening, and the withdrawals are just as severe and more anxiety provoking / depressing. I seem to be one of the few people who withdrawal may be particularly worse for gabapentin than benzos. in fact the rage/nihilism/ and emotional vulnerability spectrum of the gbp withdrawals are significantly more intense than any Benzo w/d I've felt yet.
I've felt similarly. Something about withdrawal from this class of drugs FEELS way worse than opiates or benzos. That depressed malaise ("everything is shit") is so deep and it spills over everything. But, if I objectively quantify it, w/d from benzos has way more of a panic component and this leads me to do crazy shit.
you said you have a dramatic kindle from the benzos, do you believe the kindling is cross tolerant between your gabapentinoids AND benzos?
Anecdotally, I've heard that ex-benzo addicts find gabapentinoid w/d harder than others, but I have become very familiar with w/d from both classes of drugs and no, I don't think pregabalin has a significant kindling effect akin to benzos. I do think that benzo w/d has a negative effects on ones ability to process stress and this effect can persist for many months after total withdrawal- so ex-benzo addicts might find the stress of GBPentinoid w/d to be subjectively more difficult than others.
i know they're both gaba-ergics ( or arguably gabaergics and gaba analogues) but the gaba receptors being as complex as they are there are so many sub receptor sites where I didn't think the overlap was such and thats why they have their own respective drug classes and effects?
Neither pregabalin or gabapentin are GABAergics as they do not directly interact with GABA receptors. It is thought that they decrease the metablism of GABA though.
FWIW, I'm not 100% convinced that pregabalin and gabapentin have exactly the same effects; they felt quite different to me, and I did not find a brief binge of gabapentin had much impact on my tolerance to pregabalin. It is possible to get anxious on these drugs too- something I think is suggestive of a much different mode of action to benzos also.
is someone who has withdrawn enough from gabapentinoids enough to experience kindle susceptible to that same sensitivity for gaba A agonists like benzos? and if so to what degree? could they really get sick in one dose or just a mild susceptibility ? I wish there were concrete one size fits all answers for this lol.
I think you will find yourself less tolerant to stress, and will find benzo withdrawal harder but there isn't much of a physiological reason for there to be kindling between the two drug classes.
also do you have any opinions or experience using phenibut in part of the taper?
I've never taken phenibut, but it has both GABA agonist effects as well as similar gabapentinoid effects- it will help reduce withdrawal symptoms in the short term, but it will also prolong them and potentially make them worse. I don't thinkyou should throw this in the mix TBH.
if these drug classes are cross tolerant in kindling and withdrawal wouldn't the same rule be True as applied for benzos in terms of using long half lifes as more successful tapers to keep more stable levels ?
Do you mean supplanting your GBP with phenibut due to a longer half life? Sorry, I haven't really slept and can't follow this question :D
thanks again for your time and input , much love!
Any time mate
to clarify on how I would use the potentially use the clonazepam, I would take it sporadically to help lower tolerance on gabepentin rather than switching the gabapentin regiment for clonazepam, in effect only using it one every few days. for example, we all know the strange tolerance and bioavailability issues with gbp, where just 2 days of obstaining can lower tolerance significantly to the point where I could more comfortably make the drop from 600 where I'm at now to 500 or 400. so considering today, I didn't take gabapentin since Sunday evening , over 48 hours ago. on Monday at noon I took that 500 mg of phenibut ( which more than likely is almost fully cross tolerant) , late last night I almost took some clonazepam but instead took small doses of ketamine throughout the night which surprisingly effective for mitigation of symptoms. got very poor sleep but physically felt somewhat decent. how much sense if any is this making?
Making sense to me. I had found with heavy pregabalin use that I could seriously eat 1500mg and get no effects but if I withdrew for, say, 48-72 hrs, withdrawal would be going strong- but tolerance would have decreased exponentially, to the point that a dose of 600mg would yield full, strong effects and I would be able to resume much lower dosing And pregabalin isn't thought to have that weird bioavailability issue. I'm not sure how healthy doing this is, but taking several-day breaks is certainly effective in lowering tolerance. However, tolerance will increase again very rapidly.
I found dissociatives such as O-PCE and 3-meo-PCP really useful during withdrawal from pregabalin. The only real drug to actually help make me feel normal- that says something about how crazy withdrawal from this shit is. Don't overdo it and its awesome. I found GHB at very low doses to be a nice 'break' from the heavy withdrawal; cannabis also made me feel a bit better.
Take it easy man
