Gabapentin (Neurontin)

[Born To Slay]

I feel like chiming in here. Out of desperation I took 200 mg * 3 Gabapentin on Saturday and Sunday.
It did wonders with my anxiety and tremors (benzo withdrawal) but most importantly it helped my noxacusis I'd say by 70-80%. I suddenly found sound not to be as painful and piercing. Same experience with tinnitus. It did not go, but became less piercing and I found my noise generator actually masked it. It felt miraculous.

I became a member of 4 different Facebook Gapapentin groups to educate myself more (even though Gabapentin is what I have read most about besides benzo) It scared me shitless. People who have been on it practically beg newcomers on their knees to not take the drug as it has ruined their lives in many different ways.
I have not taken any today and everything is back to HELL.

As I understand it, Gabapentin can do wonders with benzo withdrawal, but not the other way around.
They say magnesium will alleviate Gabapentin withdrawal though.

I have to really evaluate this for a while. I'm also up for middle ear surgery next month. Going to cut both the stapedius and the tensor tympani in both ears by an ENT surgeon.
At this point I'm not even sure I will dare going through with that because of the state I'm in.

If only this fucking benzo withdrawal would let up, I will know more clearly where I stand and know what is what.
7 months off. No relief.

I'm sorry it did not help you @Zugzug.

How long after you took the first pill did you notice the effects?

 

[grate_biff]

How long after you took the first pill did you notice the effects?

It was probably the benzo I took on Friday that did it and not the Gabapentin. I tried the same a week later, without the benzo, and it did nothing really.

Sorry for the misinterpretation on my part.

 

[Born To Slay]

It was probably the benzo I took on Friday that did it and not the Gabapentin. I tried the same a week later, without the benzo, and it did nothing really.

Sorry for the misinterpretation on my part.

That's disappointing. Well I stole my dead dog's Gabapentin, so I guess I'll see what happens. A lot of other people said they did well on it for pain hyperacusis.

 

[grate_biff]

A lot of other people said they did well on it for pain hyperacusis.

Where did you hear that?

 

[Born To Slay]

Where did you hear that?

If you look up "Gabapentin" in hyperacusis groups on Facebook and just the internet, you'll see a lot of anecdotal evidence that Gabapentin was helpful to them. It doesn't help everyone obviously but too many people have seen benefit for me to think it's placebo.

There is a lot of anecdotal evidence in the various groups of different meds that have helped people with hyperacusis. They're mostly meds prescribed for nerve pain. I've done a lot of research on this in the groups.

 

[Born To Slay]

So I took a 600mg pill and not much happened. I think it did have some positive impact on the facial pain but it could've been placebo.

Tomorrow I'm going to take 1200mg and see what happens.

Fortunately I haven't had a spike as a result of the Gabapentin. I'm hoping that this can be the panacea but we'll see.

 

[Born To Slay]

Update: I took 1200 mgs today and noticed some pretty interesting side effects, they include: suicide idealization, drowsiness and strange feelings in my hands. I can see why they wean people up on this stuff. Too bad I'm an inpatient fuck.

That said, still no obvious ototoxic effects. In fact, I think it does help the ear pain but I'm still not sure yet if it actually helps the pain or if it's just the drowsiness making feel that way. I think it might lower my tinnitus but my tinnitus is usually very low, so it's hard to tell (my main issue is hyperacusis, my tinnitus is mostly a non factor).

In addition, I definitely see an anti anxiety effect of the drug. It's not as strong as phenibut but it's definitely there.

I plan to continue on with Gabapentin. I'm not sure yet if I'm going to up my dosage tomorrow or do 1200 mg a second day. I'll decide tomorrow.

 

[Born To Slay]

Where did you hear that?

Also, in addition to the previously mentioned anecdotal evidence. I also found this from Hyperacusis Research:

https://hyperacusisresearch.org/an-md-summary-of-the-2016-aro-hyperacusis-symposium/

"many hyperacusis patients find GABA-increasers like gabapentin (Neurontin®) and pregabalin (Lyrica®) helpful."

 

[grate_biff]

I plan to continue on with Gabapentin. I'm not sure yet if I'm going to up my dosage tomorrow or do 1200 mg a second day. I'll decide tomorrow.

Thank you for reporting your experience.

Just be careful of duration. They say you can be hooked (according to people on Facebook groups) if taking it regularly for 14-21 days.

 

[Midas]

Also, in addition to the previously mentioned anecdotal evidence. I also found this from Hyperacusis Research:

https://hyperacusisresearch.org/an-md-summary-of-the-2016-aro-hyperacusis-symposium/

"many hyperacusis patients find GABA-increasers like gabapentin (Neurontin®) and pregabalin (Lyrica®) helpful."

From this article:

"Next Allan described a fascinating experiment in mice, illustrating a potential approach to targeting one of the contributors to neuropathic pain: the loss of inhibitory signaling. In this approach the missing GABAergic neurons are replaced by transplanting embryonic GABAergic precursors into the spinal cord. Then, GABAergic nerve transplantation was tried in humans and they "took." Back to mice, the transplanted neurons spread around the cord and integrated into its central nervous system. Further, the transplants were able to reduce induced pain of complex regional pain syndrome—suggesting a repair of the central nervous system."

WOW.

I have had severe tinnitus and hyperacusis for 30 months. After 2 weeks of GABA supplements (natural) I felt very good but had to quit because of side effects. Of course you can never be 100% sure it was because of GABA.
I'm recovering from a setback and want to try it again.

 

[Born To Slay]

Day 3 update:

Still feeling the suicide idealization but I'm no longer drowsy. In fact I'm hyper af. I could run a marathon right now. I'm also super fucking horny, like I've busted a nut five times today, I usually do that many in a week, my libido and energy in general are sky high. The limited cognitive impairment is fine.

Now to the ear stuff. Still no obvious ototoxic effects. Thankfully. I think the Gabapentin might be helping. I really do. Like not dramatically. It's not like I'm normal but I do think I'm tolerating some sounds better. Tinnitus is the same.

The anti anxiety effects are very prominent now. I'm very sociable and relaxed and just want to talk to people.

I'm debating if I want to continue at this dose tomorrow or titrate upward.

 

[Juan]

There is a lot of literature on Gabapentin. Actually the use of this drug is discussed by Oliver Sacks in his book Musicophilia, dealing with severe cases of hearing damage, brain damage, hyperacusis, and lots of combinations of hearing problems...

The conclusion I get from that book, and other articles I read, is that Gabapentin does not work for many people, and some people have an improvement or brief relief from symptoms, most of them just temporarily (symptoms reappear after a while)... so mixed results basically.

 

[Marin]

I have had severe tinnitus and hyperacusis for 30 months. After 2 weeks of GABA supplements (natural) I felt very good but had to quit because of side effects. Of course you can never be 100% sure it was because of GABA.
I'm recovering from a setback and want to try it again.

@Midas Would you mind sharing what those side effects were? I've thought about taking GABA supplements multiple times, but I'm kinda scared because I can be pretty sensitive to vitamins and medications.

 

[NewLionel]

What are the natural GABA supplements?

 

[linearb]

I just posted this in the Klonopin thread

Hrm, on the last day this was bumped, I was having a motorcycle crash I'm still a bit recovering from. Yay!

Anyway, just chiming in that this fall will mark 3 years since I reinstated klonopin daily along with gabapentin, and I'd say the same thing I did a year ago: the first 2 months were absolutely magical, and then after that the effect was reduced but still makes a fairly night-and-day difference in my happiness, ability to handle life, and amount of time I spend thinking about tinnitus.

I think both of these drugs are relatively dangerous and don't love this situation, but here we are! If some of the bimodal tech hurries up and becomes commercially viable, I will deal with benzo withdrawal. Again, again.

The combination of these drugs does something neither does on its own. I'd experimented with gabapentin up to 900mg before going back on Klonopin, but when I reduce the GHabapentin back to 300mg the tinnitus gets more shrill and intolerable within some number of days.

I don't think any of this is an especially good idea, but neither is being suicidally miserable half the time.

What are the natural GABA supplements?

There really aren't any that work; best bet is a balanced diet plus behavioral things shown in repeatable studies to increase GABA signaling and/or decrease the size of the amygdala (meditation, yoga, etc). You need to be eating pretty well so you have all your essential proteins and also vitamins and the various things you need to biosynthesize cofactors, but, ultimately, getting GABA into synapses is something your body needs to figure out on its own if you're not going for a heavy drug cocktail.

You can eat all the GABA you want; it will impact your GI system a bit, but very very little if any of it will make it into the brain. Getting substances which are rapidly metabolized or the wrong size/shape, to cross the blood brain barrier is a difficult problem; if not for this, all kinds of junk from your bloodstream would get into your break and do Bad Things.

 

[Aaron91]

I just posted this in the Klonopin thread

There really aren't any that work; best bet is a balanced diet plus behavioral things shown in repeatable studies to increase GABA signaling and/or decrease the size of the amygdala (meditation, yoga, etc). You need to be eating pretty well so you have all.

@linearb this post really resonated with me. Why did you mention reducing the size of the amygdala? I developed hyperacusis a couple of months after my father committed suicide. The whole event left me very traumatized and I've since read that people with PTSD have enlarged amygdala. Do you think there's a link? I've also read that amygdala, once enlarged, cannot shrink back to their previous size, but what you are saying suggests otherwise.

 

[linearb]

@linearb this post really resonated with me. Why did you mention reducing the size of the amygdala? I developed hyperacusis a couple of months after my father committed suicide. The whole event left me very traumatized and I've since read that people with PTSD have enlarged amygdala. Do you think there's a link? I've also read that amygdala, once enlarged, cannot shrink back to their previous size, but what you are saying suggests otherwise.

Yeah, I don't know where you read that -- the amygdala, like many brain regions, will change in size with brain function

Meditation and yoga practice are associated with smaller right amygdala volume: the Rotterdam study

Mindfulness meditation training alters stress-related amygdala resting state functional connectivity: a randomized controlled trial

Impact of short- and long-term mindfulness meditation training on amygdala reactivity to emotional stimuli

Meditation-induced neuroplastic changes in amygdala activity during negative affective processing

There's plenty of hard data that this stuff works, and you'll be very hard pressed to find anyone who has put, say, 3-500 hours into a meditation or yoga practice with some decent instruction, who doesn't think it "does stuff" that they find beneficial. There's some obvious problems with that observation: it's incredibly difficult to rack up that amount of hours in general, especially if you're starting in a stressed-out state.

However, I have found that people who are completely dismissive of all this tend to be both completely out of touch with the large wealth of peer-reviewed data behind it, as well as basically inexperienced. Some people will attempt meditation with no formal teaching, make it 10-15 hours in and realize it's making them feel "worse" (which is pretty normal, since often we're suppressing a lot of things constantly and it's painful when they start to surface) -- and then decide "oh, this is dumb, this doesn't work". That same person might have a completely different experience, if they could bond with someone that can talk them through the rough spots. At some point usually there's some kind of light-goes-on moment, but, it can be elusive, and learning theses skills from a state of distress is very difficult.

There's a reason that cultures where these things are/were valued tended to try to instill them at birth, more or less -- and there's a reason I do (short) meditation 5x a week with my small child. Wiring that stuff in at a base level is incredible; as adults, we just have to blunder into it the best we can, and be patient because our brains are slower to change. They're still changing all the time, though, very slightly in response to every thought we have.

I'm better at writing about meditating than actually doing it, and I'd say I have some hundreds of hours of experience, but not thousands. I know we have a few other people around here with really extensive experience -- or, people who have come through here.

There's a stark difference in the way tinnitus and other serious problems are discussed on fairly hardcore meditation forums, vs on health forums, because the demographic of people on serious meditation forums mostly have hundreds or thousands of hours of experience just watching their mind, and people like that are inherently in a better situation to withstand some random bullshit condition their body decides to develop. That's also something that's been demonstrated clinically using imaging studies

 

[Juan]

You need to be eating pretty well so you have all your essential proteins and also vitamins and the various things you need to biosynthesize cofactors

Did you check your Vitamin D levels?

It is an important vitamin for hearing issues...

 

[just1morething]

Did you check your Vitamin D levels?

It is an important vitamin for hearing issues...

I was low on vitamin D so now take a supplement every day.

 

[Juan]

I was low on vitamin D so now take a supplement every day.

It has recently been published that a lack of vitamin D can be associated to a higher risk of getting COVID-19.

 

[linearb]

Did you check your Vitamin D levels?

It is an important vitamin for hearing issues...

Yes; they were actually low at one point and I took supplemental D for quite a while (and still do, one and off, depending on sun exposure) -- but bringing my levels to normal didn't have any impact on my hearing

 

[Juan]

Yes; they were actually low at one point and I took supplemental D for quite a while (and still do, one and off, depending on sun exposure) -- but bringing my levels to normal didn't have any impact on my hearing

I was reading about COVID-19 and incidentally found a mention to lower vitamin D levels as an additional risk factor to getting COVID-19, and they mentioned the drug Hidroferol to fix it. Have you tried Hidroferol, or are using some other supplement?

 

[Syb]

Well, reading this long list of potentially ototoxic drugs did nothing to reassure me considering I've been taking a few on this list for a few years on a daily basis...

* Pregabalin, 150mg (4 years)
* Cetirizine, 10-20mg (2 years)
* Celebrex, on and off, 100-200mg (4 years)
* Propranolol, 40mg (3 years) (was it on the list?)

I've had tinnitus way before I started taking any of those, and no recent change in medication other than Pulmicort capsules mixed to sinus rinse could explain the recent increase in my tinnitus symptoms, but... makes me wonder. I hope I'm not going to make things worse for me in the long run. I need most of these medications to manage occipital neuralgia, migraines and allergic rhinitis.

Wish I'd known... although, I wasn't functional at all pain-wise without Pregabalin. :'(

Makes we wonder if I should stop the Cetirizine and switch to a safer antihistamine...

 

[Sayeed]

I got tinnitus on April 1st. I already suffered from anxiety etc. You can find my full story in my Introduction thread.

Within a few days of getting tinnitus my anxiety sky rocketed. My doctor gave me 10 mg of Buspar and 200 mg of Gabapentin. He prescribed the Gabapentin off-label for anxiety.

I didn't see much of a difference as my tinnitus was new, but at the time it was 10/10.

A week later he upped the dosage to 20 mg of Buspar and 400 mg of Gabapentin. I noticed my tinnitus spikes went down and overall my tinnitus went from 10/10 to 6/10. I still have some spikes.

After increasing my dosage 3 days later I noticed a huge head pressure and slight nose bleed.I called my neuro and psychiatrist and they said to go the ER and get an MRI. Interestingly the head pressure only lasted 2 hours. That day I moved some boxes out of my van and prayed with my head down. I am not sure if that has anything do with it. Regardless the head pressure hasn't come back.

The Gabapentin and Buspar have brought my anxiety down from 10/10 to about 6/10 and same with tinnitus compared to what I was initially experiencing the first couple of days.

My new neuro also just prescribed me 300 mg of Trileptal which I am running by my psychiatrist to make sure there is there is no interactions.

Gabapentin also reduced the nerve pain I was having in my leg.

 

[Linari5]

Hi there,
Even if it is my first message on Tinnitus Talk, I have been reading for quite a while now.
I have tinnitus (+ mild hyperacusis) from an acoustic trauma 10 years ago + worsenings since then.

After a recent spike making my tinnitus really bothering, an ENT specialized in tinnitus and hyperacusis in France prescribed me Gabapentin, saying he had strong results over the last years with a dosage of 300mg per day.

I have also read the below study, not too old, which seems to show good performance of Gabapentin as well (even if very small sample)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5380395/[/COLOR]

The French Doctor said he has never encountered any tinnitus worsening with Gabapentin among hundreds of patients treated.

But, I am now scared to start the Gabapentin after having read the Neil Bauman's website where he says it is known to have caused or worsen tinnitus with hundreds of people (reported to FDA).
Gabapentin is also listed as inducing tinnitus in this list of ototoxic drugs that I am using the most.
https://www.europeanreview.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/956.pdf
But maybe not with that 300mg/day dosage???

Now I do not know what to do anymore… I am frustrated not to start the Gabapentin having in mind it could maybe help even a bit… but I am so scared to possibly make my tinnitus worse...

Is there really a chance that Gabapentin could make my tinnitus worse?
Usually I have no or very little side effect when taking whatever drug so I am not very sensitive to the side effects... normally… but once would be enough...

300 mg a day, meaning 100 mg 3x a day? Or just a single dose?

 

[linearb]

It was probably the benzo I took on Friday that did it and not the Gabapentin.

Benzos + Gabapentin is my daily routine and remains substantially useful.

Gabapentin by itself doesn't do much.

The withdrawal insomnia from Gabapentin is worse than benzos and to be quite honest Gabapentin alarms me more than benzos do.

 

[kingsfan]

I took Gabapentin for 3 days (100 mg) and it made my tinnitus skyrocket. Went back down a few days after discontinuing.

 

[Ultra]

I had nearly a month's course of Gabapentin prescribed by an ENT. No effect. Then another month's course of Carbamazepine, and it probably even made things a little worse.

I'm seeing the ENT next week, but I think we've run out of things to try...

 

[JasonP]

I have been on Neurontin for three times in the past. I think once for "here and there" use (100 mg to 200 mg a day), another time where I was on it for 3 weeks (100 mg a day) and another time I took it for probably around a month or so. I think I took somewhere around 300 mg a day. I was able to get off it very easily.

Would it be safe to use again certain nights at a dose of 100 mg? Would there be any danger of "kindling"?

Also, I have a bunch of Neurontin pills that expired around 2 years ago. Would they still be safe to take? I mean would they hurt me?

Thanks for any help.

 

[David S]

I think that there really are some indications that Gabapentin could actually work for some types of tinnitus.

Here is a recent example:
New onset tinnitus in the absence of hearing changes following COVID-19 infection

A study from some years back:
Short-Term Effect of Gabapentin on Subjective Tinnitus in Acoustic Trauma Patients

There's also indication of it being regenerative:
A common drug could help restore limb function after spinal cord injury

What are your thoughts? I might consider trying it for 4-6 weeks.