Good point. I guess I was thinking it’s not an FDA-level medicine.
Our oldest dog Loki has severe thunderstorm/firework issues. I give her 300 mg of gabapentin when I see her trembling and in ten minutes she’s a happy pup. No sedation.
Several experiences here.
Took 300 mg X 3/day for half a year while recovering from surgery for extruding a lower back disk and damaging my sciatic nerve. Prescribing surgeon said this was an off-label use, and that it was good for easing nerve damage. As he predicted, it helped quite a lot with pain but did not fix the partial paralysis. Side effects were extra great sleeping every night, and a steady but very mild headache that I didn’t even mind because the benefits were so great. This was about 20 years ago.
Took, I think, 300 mg X 1/day for a month or so while recovering from neck fusion surgery. I had immediate improvement in my numb hands from the surgery – I noticed this when waking up in the recovery area. I imagine the gabapentin helped in the weeks following, but can’t actually separate the two simultaneous effects. It was also a big help sleeping.
My spouse took it following each of two knee replacement surgeries. I guess it helped her, and she had no reactions to it that I’m aware of, but I don’t have much to go on here.
I give it as an oral liquid, 2/day (don’t know the strength but it’s 1 ml) to a cat with very bad hip degeneration, as well as monthly injections of Solensia. It’s hard to gage pain in cats, but she was pooping in the wrong places before treatment started (a typical result of pain) and that’s stopped.
So, every one of these experiences was either clearly positive, or tentatively positive with somewhat uncertain evidence.
Years ago when I was having trouble sleeping my neurologist (who I was seeing for my sleep apnea) decided I should start taking gabapentin. She started me out with a prescription for 300mg tablets, one per night an hour before bedtime. Over time this was increased to two, and then three per night. At that point I was sleeping well, so she wrote me up a prescription for 800mg tablets, one or two per night as needed. I’ve been sticking with one per night, despite the doctor’s assurance that “there’s no way to OD on gabapentin”.
So last month I had a sleep study, and apparently I move around a lot in my sleep. So my current neurologist suggested that I try taking two tablets every night to see if that helps. So far I haven’t had any problem at the higher dose, so I’m probably going to stick with that.