Pregabalin reduction?

[wantokporo]

I was up to 300 mg. daily at night and have reduced due to daytime sedation issues. (It has worked great for my PLMD for 9 months; best luck I have had with meds and I have tried them all.) Got down to 225mg. fairly easily, and benefited from the advice to divide the capsules in half. However, I can't seem to get any lower without my PLMD kicking in. I have tried being super careful about triggers and still either PLMD starts or I can't sleep. Still have daytime sedation, albeit less. Would still like to reduce (I got depressed on Gabapentin, so I am worried in time I won't be able to take Pregabalin for the same reason) but I am guessing this is just as good as it gets? Thanks for any thoughts in advance.

[Doversoul]

Hello - I am in a similar place to you. Reduced from 300mg to 200mg. OKay for 5/6 days but sleep became a problem at night. Spent many nights pacing the lounge floor and grabbing the odd bit of sleep during the day,. Also, despite taking 200mg at night RLS started to break in earler than it had. So I went back to 250mg , but that didn't improve matters much so then back up to 300mg for a few days, and I was able to get the RLS under control, plus a good few hours night sleep. Then started to feel rough and over tired in the mornings , so have reduced to 250mg and RLS is much reduced and bearable , but night sleep is still an issue.

50mg Trazadone was part of my RLS management at night, and had been taking it for many, many months. As part of my personal objective is to minimize my drug intake I reduced taking it to nil over a 7 day period. The benefit has been that I no longer get the violent bicycle leg action experienced nightly . I had thought that leg action at night was part of my RLS and hadn't made the link. When reading about the side effects of Trazadone it made the link.

So no more Trazadone for me, I will continue on 250mg daily of Pregabalin and get sleep when I can during the day. When I feel I have a good chance of keeping the RLS in check for a while, reduce to 200mg per day for as long as I can bear to do so, and I guess then I will need to go increase back up to 250 then 300 and eventually back to 250 then 200. Hopefully, somewhare along that path there will be some sleep .!

[Parminter in reply to Doversoul]

Hi Doversoul (good name!) - Could you explain the 'bicycle legs' phenomenon? I think I may have something similar, although I have never taken Trazodone.

[Joolsg]

I reduced from 150mg to zero over 9 months by dividing 25mg capsules into 4. However I was also taking 25mg OxyContin over 24 hours so that covers my RLS.

I think you may have to ask for meds review & consider adding a low dose opioid- you could push for Buprenorphine or Temgesic & continue reducing pregabalin slowly.