I am due to start taking Gabapentin tonight, but the side effects scare me. I’ve already tried Amitriptyline and Nortriptyline, both made my vestibular migraine much worse. I have been suffering 24/7 for 14 months now, bedbound, and am desperate for relief. Has anyone had any success at treating vestibular migraine with 24/7 symptoms by taking Gabapentin?
Gaba has been helping me. I’m on Pizotifen too. Gabapentin had very few side effects for me, other than some dullness and heavy-headed tiredness when starting/increasing doses, which for me faded after a few days.
please see my post The Pizotifen Diaries for a diary of my meds and my progress.
Gaba has been easy for me to take, much much easier than pizotifen.
I’ve been taking Gabapentin for about 18 months now. I noticed immediate partial relief after I hit about 300mg per day. I titrated up to 900mg a day and that got me to about 80% functionality on a good day.
Very minimal side effects. but I do find that Gabapentin literally slows my brain down. It makes me slur words and think a little slower than usual, but that’s really the only side effect. As far as migraine drugs go it’s one of the easiest to tolerate
Thanks! I asked my gp for this drug in particular because i’d heard of it being better tolerated. It was either that or Topiramate and i’d heard bad things about that.
yes i agree with this. i can think properly, but not as quick and zappy as usual, and i have short term memory loss from time to time. nothing scary, just an exaggerated version of ‘did i lock the door?’ etc
i’m only up to 500mg daily at the moment so i’ll see how far i get…!
Gabapentin in the news:
http://www.heraldtribune.com/news/20180505/drug-epidemic-ensnares-25-year-old-pill-for-nerve-pain
1 Like
I’ve been off the site a little while but just saw this and find it hilarious! Thanks for sharing. Pardon my language but how the hell could anyone get a “high” or euphoric feeling off of Gabapentin? I’m on 100 mg and had to stay at that dose because I couldn’t increase without horrible nausea, increased dizziness, and blurred vision. And, it took me 3 weeks just to get rid of the nausea from the 100 mg. And 100 mg isn’t even considered a helpful dose…people are crazy these days. And I am super sensitive to every medicine.
@anon66936569 Did you end up trying the Gabapentin? Curious to hear if it helped you or if you had any side effects? I’ve been considering trying to increase my dosage again.
Just about to start Gabapentin 300mgs! Just wanted to see what people’s thoughts on this drug? Any positive/success stories on this med?
The sbove is from the Exeter Headache Clinic where my first neuro-otologist advised me to go from all commonly used preventative drugs. I know several people including a brother-in-law who have taken it for pain relief from chronic pain from other conditions and been very impressed with it. Helen
Thanks Helen. I’ll take a look!
I take Gabapentin 900mg daily. I started at 300mg and worked my way up. While it has not eliminated the dizziness for me what it has done is raise my dizziness floor so to speak. Before when I had a bad day, I would be at maybe 20-30% functionality. Basically I’d go to work and then come home and go to bed.
With the Gabapentin on a bad day I’m at more like 40-50% which is a big improvement. Unfortunately I couldn’t tolerate 1200mg daily so I’ve stayed on the 900 mg for the last 18 months.
Thanks for your feedback! So will you try and add another med or stay at 50% hopefully it will give me some imrpovements! Do you get ear fullness?
I started Nortriptyline in February of this year at 10mg and am working my way up. Currently at 30mg and will be going to 40mg in the near future. Each increase knocks me on my ass for 2-3 weeks so I’m taking it slow. Definitely been seeing improvement with the two drugs
Well that’s great news! Let’s hope recovery is not too far away for you! I’m yet to find my med but praying gab will help with the stuffed head feeling and spacey vision
The nice thing about Gabapentin is there are very little side effects at most doses. It makes me feel a little dumb, words don’t come to me as easily as the usually do, but otherwise I didn’t have any side effects until I hit 1200mg. At that point I started to feel very light headed all the time, so I went back down to 900mg
Did you/ do you get the spaced out/dreamy head feeling and vision? Has gab helped with this?
Gab helps a lot to me with no sides.
1 Like