None for me. I've stopped for about 4-5 days at a time. But I hardly ever did abuse them out of the many months I was on high dose (up to 600mg, but mostly 450mg) and am only on 150mg / day ATM (75x2). I think I've done somewhat high single doses maybe 8-10x the past year (I'd say closer to 6) and they've all been over the past 3 months and never daily (well not recently). I did do high doses daily successfully about a year ago - getting desired effects for 2 days and on the 3rd day I was almost immune so I decided that it was a waste of time and pretty much forgot about it. My tolerance dropped almost as quick as it went up - I think taking low maintenance doses for 3 days would allow me to get effects again on the day after the 3rd. By maintenance I mean for pain, I never even thought it would cause w/ds until I checked into it more.
After ceasing 2-3 days of my normal 450mg / day I did get bad rebound neuralgia though. My neuralgia is almost gone now but I do notice a slight increase in discomfort around the problem site (dropped foot). Nothing hectic, I actually requested a dose drop recently (or rather asked for advice) because I hate the cognitive disruption that Lyrica/Gabapentin has caused me the past 18 months (it is almost back to normal on 150mg/day) but my neurologist wanted me to stay on 150mg till October as it gets cold here until then, not very but <0C in the early morning/late night and the cold does cause quite intense flair ups. She claims they could potentially trigger a long lasting episode of (rebound?) neuralgia. You could say that that would be a potent w/d symptom or at least a "discontinuation" symptom since some people want to subscribe to the notion that only "junkies" or people who abuse meds get w/d.
So if you have bad neuralgia, the withdrawal is really really bad. But that's rebound neuralgia not withdrawal. As far as GABAergic w/d symptoms, ie true w/d not a rebound effect if that exists and all w/d is not just rebound effect, I personally didn't experience any but I didn't really abuse Lyrica - even the times I got high when I first got it were more to numb myself of the pain I was in, recently more for sleep or smooth comedown of drugs that I prefer over Lyrica.
By the time I knew that Lyrica could make you high, was somewhat safe (not as much as I thought, seeing your post and some others) I had already started accumulating mounds of other psycho-actives that were better (Midazolam - now there's a recipe for w/d, Clonazepam - no w/d for me from this ever at avg 1.5mg/day but cross dependence on Lyrica might account for that, psychedelics, weed, highly potent opiates / oids etc).
If it was my only way of relaxing, I might have been more clear headed after running out of Lyrica but I can tell you I did run out of Lyrica more than once when I had no other GABAergics available and didn't experience any shakes, tremors, depression, excitation or whatever else you should experience, just pain in my foot. I was never clean of opiates during these times and was most likely taking high doses too. However, fent w/d and the midazolam w/d was something I definitely felt even though I tried as hard as I could to wipe them out with the other class of drugs (opiates for midaz, benzo's for fent).
Just some general advise to anyone thinking of using this drug for long lengths of time, daily for lets say 4+ months, there are things associated with it worse than w/d. a recap from someone taking it at high doses for a long time (I did it January 2008 - January 2009 @ 450mg) and then slowly tapering over months (150mg @ time of posting), getting my life back in the process...
If you are considering high dosage use of this drug (300mg-450mg @ 220lbs for me) LONG TERM (2-3 months to start seeing negative effects) everyday and do not have a relatively severe medical problem (bad neuralgia, bad anxiety) I would advise not to. What you can look forward to in addition to potential w/d is (keep in mind I seem to be lucky with w/d in general with opiates as well as benzos, no brain - no pain
):
- Extreme decrease in libido at doses of 450mg / day. It tends to up it drastically at first while your getting high so you think "sweet! hell yeah", but then it drops to zero and being practically "A-sexual" is shit, you don't become impotent but what the hell are you going to do if you don't want anyone? 150mg/day is fine for me @ 200lbs and almost normal but in lighter people it might be too high, higher doses on top of this still produce a rise, not direct - pardon the pun. They should seriously give this stuff to rapists/molesters if they won't allow us to chop certain bits off. In jail of course, so they aren't around kids / woman when the + effect occurs.
- becoming a border line retard, not so much during problem solving but forgetting what you did the day before is not that great, forgetting girls' names you really should remember sucks even more (not that you'll have to, you won't want them anyway and unless they really love you, are your soul mate or really desperate they won't want you either... Given the rest of the list).
- becoming sluggish etc. You just become slow and feel very clumsy. The direct affect of the intoxication is extreme clumsiness. Don't do Lyrica while driving!
- to top it off is the extreme weight gain from the appetite increase and your muscles turning to fat from no exercise. So if you find a girl that will tolerate your slow, moronic dumbass with low sex drive knocking over her ornaments and standing on her toes, she will leave you when you put on 100lbs of fat and 25lbs of the little muscle you have left turns into fat making you even slower and less likely to be voted most likely to succeed.
If you do however need to go on this drug, normal healthy lifestyle choices apply, it can also be a life saver but for the above mentioned reasons I'm not sad to see it on it's way out... I think I would have killed myself had it not been for either this or Gabapentin because my neuralgia did not respond to anything besides it. Not IV morphine, not Carbemazepine or Amytriptilline. Only weed made it tolerable, Lyrica and Neurontin erased it. Neurontin was almost bankrupting me at 12000mg / day (3600 or 4000mg x 3). And yes I'm aware that it's BA is lower at high doses but someone forgot to tell my sciatic nerve that. Lyrica was launched here 2 months after I was injured so it was good timing because I couldn't get more than 1200mg / day of Neurontin on insurance.