I’m a chronic pain patient and my doctor is trying to find an alternative treatment besides opiates to combat the pain. Recently he had me using Gabapentin and things seemed to be going well. I first started of with 300mg the times a day. This was showing no improvement so he upped the dose to 600mg the times a day. I have only been taking the new dosage for two days and already my opiate use was cut in half! The new drug seemed to be working on the pain.
Yesterday I felt a bit dizzy but didn’t connect it to the new dosage. I figured I ate something that didn’t agree with me. Today was a bit scarier. I was driving with my wife and became extremely tired. We were only a few minutes from our destination so I continued on. We arrived to pick our daughter up from school and my wife suggested she drive. I agreed and moved to the passenger seat. Then the next thing I remember is waking up as we pulled into our house, about 20 minutes away. I asked my wife, “aren’t we supposed to pick up our daughter?”. She looked at me strange and said we already did. I had zero memory of arriving at the school and switching places with my wife. I stayed in the car while she went to get our daughter. When she came back she said I was sleeping, so she let me sleep and drove home. I have to count this as a black out and not an episode of falling asleep because I have no memory of going to sleep and zero memory of anything that happened 5 minutes before I blacked out.
The whole episode has kinda squicked me out as I’ve never experienced a blackout before and I get freaked out thinking about what could have happened if it happened a few minutes earlier while I was driving. I called my doc and he he has me reverting back to the 300mg dosage and I’m going to see him tomorrow. He told me to make sure I don’t drive.
What I want to know is what causes the blackout? I thought a drop in blood pressure is what would cause that, but not sure if Gabapentin would do that. Any ideas?
I was on Neurontin/Gabapentin a few years ago for some severe bruising I had to my shins in an accident. It was honestly pretty useless as a pain reliever. If I took it later in the day then sat down at my desk I would nod off not for a few minutes, but for several hours. I’d wake up at my desk and it would be 9 PM. In those circumstances it was a catnap that slid into deep sleep, It wasn’t a “blackout”.
But to answer your question, yes if you are tired and try to take a short nap it will knock you on your ass for a much longer time than usual. I didn’t have it knock me out against my will. I stopped taking it because it was minimally effective as a pain medicine. I never understood the doctor’s enthusiasm for it.
You were prescribed Gabapentin for bruises? Yeah, that wouldn’t work. Gaboids are prescribed for nerve pain(among other things). Pain from injuries requires painkillers. As for the passing out, it could have been the medicine, but maybe not. Your dosage was increased faster than normal from what I’ve seen. My wife went from 300 to 400 to 500 to 600 to 800 over three years. Jumping from 300 to 600 is pretty significant.
I don’t know the answer to your question about blackouts. However your dose was increased pretty quickly. It is still within a typical amount as taken with opiates for nerve pain. I know several people with various types of chronic nerve pain who take this, and I’d say about 50pct love it and the other half found it ineffective or having intolerable side effects.
Drowsiness was very commonly reported as a side effect, as was dizziness. They said it was the type of room spinning dizziness one gets after drinking, but without the fun of drinking. No one ever told me about blackouts. Maybe you just fell asleep really hard from drowsiness?
Of the people who continued taking the gabapentin, all (all who told me) said that the side effects resolved within a week or two. And that once the side effects subsided, the medicine was less effective against pain.
One person told me that she takes Excedrin with the gabapentin and it helped her reduce her opiate use even further.
I am not a doctor or healthcare provider of any kind. My job includes working closely with people, and they often share medical stories with me of their own accord, so I hear quite a few stories, stories but all of my information is purely anecdotal.
Thanks for the reply. I have tried to not exaggerate what happened. The reason I classify this as a blackout is that by the time we got to the school, the extreme drowsiness had seemed to have passed, I have no memory of closing my eyes or preparing for sleep and upon waking up I had lost memory of the five minutes our so prior to going out. My wife said I was very coherent when I arrived and switched positions, but I can’t remember any of it.
But either rapid onset of deep sleep or blackout, I’m wondering what takes place in one’s body to cause that to happen. Very strange experience, can’t even say I disliked it, I just don’t understand it.
The only approved use of Neurontin is as a second-line anti-seizure drug. Pfizer was unable to make money off a second line anti-seizure drug so they embarked on a huge fraudulent campaign to promote the drug for a wide variety of off-label uses including pain and depression. This scam consisted of things like hiring doctors to make false claims about the effectiveness of the drug for off-label uses (one who turned whistleblower) and planting articles in medical journals. They hired a consulting firm to write something like 36 articles, some of which were quite subtle-- a one or two line mention of Neurontin as an effective treatment for whatever buried in a larger article on another subject --then they found and paid doctors to claim authorship). It was quite the scandal and it’s enough to make me believe the drug is really not effective for much of anything.
I was prescribed Neurontin (gabapentin) for restless leg syndrome. It works somewhat, but if I take it shortly before I go to bed (when I need it), it makes me VERY drowsy and groggy in the morning, so I try to avoid it unless I REALLY need it. I would imagine that if I took it earlier in the day, that groggy feeling would be bad news while I was awake and doing things like driving.
When kaylasmom was receiving her health coverage through Cal-Optima, she was having some nerve pain due to diabetic neuropathy. Her doctor gave her some samples of Pregabalin (Lyrica), which were pretty effective. Unfortunately, Lyrica wasn’t on the formulary for CalOptima patients (and was way too expensive for us to buy on our own), so he switched her to Gabapentin.
So I suppose that’s why some doctors are enthusiastic about it.
(Gabapentin wasn’t that effective for her, btw, except as a sleep aid, and it left her feeling groggy the next day.)
I take it, and it’s wonderful for my nerve pain, but doesn’t make me drowsy at all. Although I wouldn’t mind it making me drowsy at night, I’d rather it didn’t do it at all rather than put me out. No wonder my neighbor was so surprised when we were on a walk and I mentioned I had just taken some; I guess it made her dad sleepy, but now I understand what she meant.
I take gabapentin specifically to sleep. I have insomnia and took Ambien for awhile, then switched to trazedone, then added gabapentin. So, I’m not surprised that 600mg put you out like a light. I take 300mg a night, but will take 600mg if I know the insomnia is going to be bad. Did this the other night. Slept like a rock for 11 hours. Woke up drowsy but that went away after coffee followed by 16 oz of water.
Well I have been taking 1200 in the morning and 900 at night for about 3 years (this is the dose I started on) and at first there would be times I fell asleep and my husband couldn’t wake me up and he panicked. So I believe you. I didn’t even remember falling asleep so many times.