Pregabalin

[Hoochybaby]

Can anyone tell me their experiences taking this drug.

I take 300mg at nights but with awful insomnia and also heart palpitations

Would appreciate any advice

[Doversoul]

The dose 300mg is the max approved by NICE for RLS. I take that dose daily and would suffer side effects similar to you if I regularly took that that amount at night. I would suggest that you try varying when you take the tabs. 150mg at night may be fine but , you may need to take the other 150mg mid morning.

If you have been prescribed Pregabalin 300mg per day by a neurologist, then I would let that doctor know the symptoms you are experiencing. In my case I am prescribed 50,100 and 150mg tablets and I can therefore adjust the timing and dose to meet my need. Pregabalin is a tool to help you cope with the RLS symptoms it cannot cure it.

[Amrob]

Hi, i take 300mg nightly and have done for approx 5 years. I find it knocks me out about 3 hours after I take it. And I get heart palpitations from time to time but I know you can get that with magnesium which I also take.

Otherwise with the pregabalin I experience spaced out feeling, reduced cognitive functioning and daytime fatigue (which may or may not be pregabalin). However it also means i don't awaken desperately tired.

[Hoochybaby in reply to Amrob]

Hi I get dreadful insomnia with Pregabalin 300mg I reduced the amount to 275mg last night but with the same insomnia I know it takes time to adjust to a new amount. I am ok during the day with my rls it’s nighttime that is the worst. The problem is that I feel tired during the day and regularly go to bed to catch up on my sleep. I know it’s a catch 22 situation but during the day I am overwhelmed with tiredness and just can’t help myself. The heart palpitations may or may not be due to the Pregabalin but I seemed to have them when I was on the 300 mg dose age

[Heatherlss]

I took 150mg for a while and had insomnia but not sure if it was down to pregabalin. I think though it did not do a very good job for my legs but my doc was not willing to increase the dose Does it help your legs at 300mg?

[Pam34]

I’ve taken 150mg for about 3 years with no problems. If I wake in the night and a walk round doesn’t settle me then I take an extra 50mg. But that is rare. I initially had balance issues (usually if I got up in the night for the loo!) and a bit of weight gain but this stabilised as did the balance issues over time. Maybe a bit of day time sleepiness but not sure if that’s just because I’m getting old 😬.

So I would say I get about 80% coverage most of the time and I’m prepared to put up with the minor side effects as a decent nights sleep is priceless. After the complete horrors of ropinorole and subsequent withdrawal, which still haunt me now, I’ve finally got my life back.

Incidentally I’ve had a recent phone appt with my neurologist and he said I could increase up to 600mg a day split into 300mg in the morning and 300mg in the evening. I’m not convinced of this and hope I don’t get to that point.....

Pam

[Joolsg]

I was prescribed it at 150mg to counteract panic attacks on oxycontin and to act as a sedative to help sleep. It definitely helped with sedation & sleepiness but I've just come off it very slowly ( 9 months) to avoid Augmentation ( RLS had moved to shoulder, arm & hand). I didn't suffer palpitations, just dizziness, double vision & increased appetite.

When you say insomnia, do you mean it causes wakefulness & you find you cannot fall asleep , or do you mean the RLS wakes you/stops you sleeping?

I haven't encountered anyone else on here saying it keeps them awake- it's usually the opioids that cause wakefulness. But, as we know from this website, we all have very different reactions to Meds & supplements.

[Hoochybaby in reply to Joolsg]

I have great trouble getting to sleep it’s a combination of restless legs and not being able to sleep no matter how hard I try. When I first went on to Pregabalin it worked very well on a smaller dose of 75mg but I had to keep increasing up to 300 mg to get the same effect and then the 300 mg didn’t work so back to square one. I didn’t realise you could augment on Pregabalin like the DAs. I had a phone consultation with my gp who seemed at loss what to do but told me to cut back on the dosage .

[Joolsg in reply to Hoochybaby]

Maybe it’s time to consider other meds ? If it’s not helping your RLS & causing wakefulness, you may have become tolerant.

There’s a 2014 study which reports augmentation on pregabalin & Alison7 also reported that it caused augmentation.

If you stop pregabalin, reduce slowly.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...

[Parminter in reply to Joolsg]

Gosh, how interesting. Both the augmentation on pregabalin and the panic attacks from oxycontin are new to me. How did you resolve this?

[Joolsg in reply to Parminter]

I was given the pregabalin to counteract the Oxycontin panic attacks and it worked. I then slowly reduced pregabalin from 150mg to zero over 9 months to reduce side effects. Once off pregabalin, the augmentation in my arms & shoulder went and luckily the panic attacks didn't re occur.Now just on Oxycontin and medical cannabis (oil with 20% THC).

[Hidden]

This is a bit of a tricky situation.

Pregabalin is known for causing drowsiness, but since it takes about 2 hours to work and then has a half life of 6 hours it seems unusual for it to cause insomnia. However if you reduce the dose and the insomnia improves that might suggest that it is causing insomnia.

Not so simple because a lesser dose may mean worse RLS symptoms, hence might cause insomnia themselves.

The sleepiness during the day may due to insomnia at night. Pregabalin in addition can cause fatigue. Fatigue is more than simple tiredness, it is mental as well as physical and can cause weakness. i.e. it can be overwhelming .

Unfortunately this makes it very difficult, because the more you sleep in the day, the worse you sleep at night. If the fatigue is overwhelming, then it makes it seem impossible.

I say lthis not because I have any solution, just to say I appreciate what you're experiencing. I suffer it myself.

I would suggest however that you might consider if something else is going on. i.e. could there be another reason for your fatigue?

Similarly, palpitations doesn't seem to be listed as a side effect of pregabalin. Could there be another reason for these?

[Amrob in reply to Hidden]

Hi Manerva, may I ask, do you experience fatigue with pregabalin?I experience considerable daytime fatigue (not tiredness) despite sleeping okay at night. I'm trying to establish whether it's the pregabalin and so have slowly started reducing my dose.

[Hidden in reply to Amrob]

I don't take pregabalin, I take gabapentin which however is very similar and both can cause fatigue.

I was suffering fatigue a few months ago which I thought might be the gabapentin, but it turned out to be due to something else.

As I say, it can be a side effect of pregabalin, but just to be sure it might be worthwhile having a word with your doctor for a few blood tests to make sure it's not something else.

.

[lee_uk]

I took 300mg for a few months and had the usual side effects - dizziness, increased appetite and feeling foggy. It didn’t help much with my sleep, 5 or 6 hours on a good night. I switched to Gabapentin, and now take 1200mg in one go. This gives me the same amount of sleep but with no side effects. I tried 1500mg one night and the side effects came back so I went straight back down. I felt Pregabalin was far better during the day as I didn’t get any restlessness until I went to bed. I did come off it very quickly (not by choice) but it was nowhere near as bad as coming off a DA.

[nick-the-turk]

Taken pregabalin now for a good few years along with codiene phosphate with good results and I hope with no side effects that I know off

[Amrob in reply to nick-the-turk]

What dose of pregabalin and codeine do you take?

[Hoochybaby in reply to Amrob]

I take 225 mg pregabalin and 30mg codeine nightly I was talking 300 mg pregabalin but suffered badly with insomnia I was lucky to get 2 hours sleep at night and my rls was bad I am getting some sleep now but not very much and suffer with heart palpitations which I think is due to the lack of sleep