New Here - Dealing with Gabapentin/Clonazepam withdrawal symptoms, any advice?

Hi everybody, my name is Gabe and I'm a relatively healthy (regarding weight, blood pressure, etc.) 19 year old male who suffers from fibromyalgia (I know, not the usual demographic for this kind of thing) and I don't smoke. My symptoms are too long and varied for me to describe right now. To keep this as short and simple as I can, I was prescribed 300 mg a day of gabapentin for the nerve pain and 0.5 mg of clonazepam for sleep aid by my doctor and it worked pretty well to relieve the symptoms for the first week, but I became pretty tolerant pretty quickly with this stuff and I maybe prematurely upped my dosage by myself to like 700-800 mg a day and 1 mg a night for the for the second week. But recently I started to better my diet and exercise more so I started even feeling better regarding sleeping and the pain, etc and so I decreased my gabapentin a day to like 500-600 max for the 3rd week. But now inevitably I ran out of it yesterday and I'm experiencing really bad withdrawal symptoms, I'm in a terrible mood, a bit disoriented, severely anxious, getting these random outbursts of anger and suicidal thoughts + now I have a really bad headache, I'm nauseous/dizzy and of course the pain is back in full force. I could only get like 3-4 hours of sleep last night and i woke up terribly, probably the worst morning I had since I started with this medication. The problem is it's Saturday and my doctor isn't in on the weekends, there's no way to contact him until Monday the earliest and my pharmacy won't grant me a refill until at least another 4 days or until they can contact my doctor (which, again, is on Monday the earliest). I feel pretty badly about upping the dosages but I just wanted the pain to go away :/. Anyways, now that I've stated my situation, does anybody have any helpful advice on how to maybe alleviate these withdrawal symptoms I'm having or cope with it a little more easier, and also any advice for sleeping better as well? Because without the clonazepam last night my insomnia came back full force. I hope I can get these refilled by Monday, cuz I gotta go back to class then and I don't want to feel this bad during class lol. I didn't know where else to reach out to, and this seemed like the perfect place. Thanks in advance for any advice!

I don't have any personal experience or anything helpful for the clonazepam side of the equation, but I saved this link long ago and today I wondered if robertpc's experience (late in the thread) in this older discussion might have something useful. (I see the thread has since been locked, since it was so old, and twice resurrected.)


https://www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=24&m=1825867

Post Edited (Rockon) : 3/15/2014 1:48:46 PM (GMT-6)

I know you must of been miserable over the weekend. Withdrawls are no fun. I have been through many and I said never again. I have learned to stay away from sleep aides and anxiety meds. When you don't have them your body screams at you and then you can't sleep for days plus many other symptoms. I have learned to do more natural remedies. I hope your doing ok.

Hey guys thanks for all the support! I went back to the doc and finally got a refill on my meds and feel a lot better now with the gabapentin, though I might start to wean off on the sleep pill cuz I think that's what affected me most. Might just take some nyquil or have some tea (probably more of this) if I'm really having trouble. Anyways, I found out from an MRI that I have multiple herniated and bulging discs throughout my whole neck and back (one specifically bad in that C4-C5 area [don't really know what that means lol] on the left side), so that's probably the root of most of my pain I'm guessing... I'm gonna go see a neurosurgeon soon and all that. Do any of you with similar issues know what the best medical course of action regarding this? Whether it be surgery or an epidural or something else? Doctor said to start taking Alene twice a day so I'm gonna do that, hopefully that helps. I've been exercising a lot and eating well lately, so that's been helping me out as well as the gabapentin, but I'm probably gonna have to have something done about the discs and stuff which is why I'm asking. Anyways, thanks again for all your support and any future advice!

I had disc surgery 2 years ago, but in the lower lumbar region, L4-5. I tried to avoid it (because of course, there are associated risks) - had 2 epidurals - but neither that nor time helped at all...it was so painful I couldn't really function. Afterwards, the surgeon said there were more pieces of disc wedged against the Sciatic Nerve than he'd guessed by looking at the MRI....and lots of nerve damage.

I still have pain, weakness, and numbness, but at least now I can walk, sit down, and lead a somewhat normal life.

I'm glad you're taking good care of yourself - that can only help you, whatever you end up doing. It's so hard to say what you should do, because every case is different. It's crucial that you have a doctor you can believe in, ideally a team of them who share your information. Do research when if and when you're choosing a surgeon!

Good luck -

Debbie