Shocked

[Spazy]

I have been on 2-3 mg a night for YEARS. I am suffering from augmentation so of the mirapex I go! I ramped up gabapentintin to 1200 a day and I am on only 1 mg now. My side effects ate minimal and surprising. Is the half life why the withdrawal seems better or the gabapentintin or does it takes days to start withdrawal

[Joolsg]

Hi Spazy,

The dose for Mirapex is 0.125mg. Have you typed the wrong numbers? If you were on 3mg of Mirapex that is 24 times the new recommended dose.

Withdrawal kicked in big time for me when I stopped the last dose of a dopamine agonist. Maybe, because you are on such a high dose your body won’t start to go through withdrawal until you reduce further.

Do let us know how you get on.

Jools

[Spazy in reply to Joolsg]

No mistake 2-3 mg night!

[Joolsg in reply to Spazy]

That dose amounts to gross medical negligence! Are you in UK or USA?

Why such a high dose? Did it stop being effective and the doctor kept increasing the dose? Didn’t he/she read the side effects leaflet with the meds and available online?

I’m shocked.

[Mona23 in reply to Joolsg]

Many doctors - including my former doctor - are prescribing more than the recommended amount. If it doesn’t work, they try to switch the pt. to a triplicate opiate. Sorry, I don’t want that! I was on 2 mg/day. .5x4, any time of day they worked best for me. I’ve been in augmentation, too, though I didn’t know it had a name until recently. I’m down to one .5 tablet most days, no more than 2 on my worst day. With the continued use of CBDw/minimalTHC, I hope I’ll be able to go off Mirapex entirely, fairly soon.

[Joolsg in reply to Mona23]

I wish cannabis oil with THC were legal here in the UK.

Augmentation is horrible- I went through it in 2015/16 and withdrawal in August 2016.

I’m on opioids and very grateful as they are much better than dopamine agonists.

I wish you all the best in getting off the DA. Good luck.

Jools

[Doversoul]

We are all different and react to drugs prescribed on the basis how the body absorbers and gets into our system. I would expect you to suffer side affects from withdrawal of Mirapex. How long and severe is an unknown, and a gradual reduction over a period of some weeks, plus a gradual introduction of a replacement drug is how I would do it.

Sometime ago I was taking 1800mg of Gabapentin daily plus 3mg Ropinirole. I found that for about 3 months my RLS was controlled. But the downside was loose bowels a side effect of the Gaba and had to gradually reduce my daily intake over 3/4 weeks until I was off it. My RLS continued to plague me!

[involuntarydancer]

That’s a verocious dose of mirapexin to be on. Worse if you are in the UK as the measurements here are different - it’s stronger than the US I believe. Jules is correct, unless there were complicating factors we don’t know about, it was medical negligence to prescribe such a high dose.

When I discontinued mirapexin I was surprised by how low I got before the withdrawals commenced. I think it was at about a third of the original dose when they started. It got pretty bad then until I’d been off them for a while. I’m afraid you will have tough times ahead and should really have an opioid such as OxyContin to help you temporarily.

[Cantstopwontstop]

My Mirapex withdrawal symptoms started 10 days after my last dose and lasted more than a year. I took it for ten years.