Cocaine Gabapentin Treats Cocaine Addiction

Just wanted to share some information with you all I found at an outpatient treatment facility I'm currently in. According to new research my counselor and staff doctor has sourced Gabapentin is shown to be effective in recovery for cocaine cravings. I read some of the research reports briefly and I gather it doesn't help much with any side effects of cocaine addiction, like depression and all of that, but does show to reduce the cravings to use cocaine in addicts. The staff doctor wanted me to use it for this reason, which I declined. I don't have any of the reports, or any personal experience with it. Just passing along what the staff shared with me. I see a ton of threads on abusing Gabapentin, if you want to call it that, and thought maybe you'd enjoy some other food for thought on Gaba.

The reason why GBP is so effective for various addictions is most likely because you're trading one addiction for another one. Its much easier to get off of something when you're replacing it with something else.

Replacing cocaine euphoria with Gabapentin? Doubtful. I agree with replacement, but in this case, not likely.

Breezy 1189 said:

Replacing cocaine euphoria with Gabapentin? Doubtful. I agree with replacement, but in this case, not likely.

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Who said anything about euphoria? I'm not talking about abuse of it. I'm talking about distracting the brain with something else which GBP does quite effectively with a large number of substances, oftentimes producing a worse addiction than the original substance in the process with less reward as well.

Gaba producing a worse addiction than the original substance. I seriously doubt that. Distracting your brain, sure I get that. Doing it with a far less, if not near non existent reward? If it has no reward, no euphoria, how exactly would it be distracting. You don't forget driving a sports car because you bought a new skateboard. My skepticism on this working at all is very high. As far as it being a replacement drug, completely unbelieving.

Edit: I'm not just arguing for the sake of arguing either. I just don't see that. Even if it does help, I doubt replacement is why.

I could see that working.

Yes, neurontin does seem to cause addiction in some people, dependant on personal physiology and addictive personality traits, but I assume those things would be taken into account particularly if being treated by an addiction specialist or psychiatrist, who would seem to be the only health care professionals that would even try neurontin for cocaine addiction.

Even at that, if trading one addiction for another, c'mon... cocaine vs Neurontin?!?

Breezy 1189 said:

Gaba producing a worse addiction than the original substance. I seriously doubt that. Distracting your brain, sure I get that. Doing it with a far less, if not near non existent reward? If it has no reward, no euphoria, how exactly would it be distracting. You don't forget driving a sports car because you bought a new skateboard. My skepticism on this working at all is very high. As far as it being a replacement drug, completely unbelieving.

Edit: I'm not just arguing for the sake of arguing either. I just don't see that. Even if it does help, I doubt replacement is why.

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The whole point of using Neurontin would be to transition off of the old substance. If you are addicted to something, you tend to displace that addiction onto something else. So they give you Neurontin, Lyrica, even benzos. You drop your previous substance and before you know it, you have a new dependency on a "legal" substance.

Its a vicious cycle.

In no way am I saying that Neurontin substitutes for cocaine. But that isn't really why they would give it to you in treatment. Treatment goals are not to keep you high but to get to you off of your DoC. And you are sadly mistaken if you think these treatment facilities that prescribe this crap have your best interests in mind. I've been to a few of them. The last one came highly recommended. Rapid detox off of Valium using Tranxene and Depakote then they sent me home on a toxic dose of Depakote and I ended up getting hooked on that, ended up in the hospital, and back on the Valium.

I have no sympathy when it comes to cocaine. If you chose to get on it, you can choose to get off of it. I'm completely against drug therapies for cocaine addiction because it doesn't have the physical risks associated with it that benzos, opiates, and even alcohol do. All they are trying to do is push pills as much as they possibly can.

Honestly it seems like they are just trying to find even more offlabel uses for Pfizer's cash cow... I wonder how much they're getting paid.