Pregabilin side effects?

[wantokporo]

I have been slowly reducing pregabalin (from 300mg once a day at night to now 100mg). Still mostly covers my PLMs. Side effects: still have some daytime sedation, but main concern now is I think it is causing confusion and memory loss. My evidence is my playing music with others and parts that I knew and could do are now difficult or impossible. I know we are all different. My hope is I could reduce the drug to get decent coverage and eliminate the daytime sedation. But now these cognitive issues kind of change things and I don't know exactly what to expect or to do. (I have not noticed cognitive issues in other realms, like my line dancing and Spanish studies and my husband says he hasn't noticed these changes, but I am 73 years old.) Any comments are appreciated. I think if I told the doc he would just say to get off of it, but I have tried everything (admittedly not for as long as maybe I should have tried before giving up).

[Amrob]

I experience the same. I have been on varying doses of pregabalin over the past 7 years but 300mg would be my most typical dose. I have reduced cognitive function with my recall being especially affected. I hope that it goes back to normal once I come off pregabalin, which I'm attempting currently. I do find it very good at controlling my PLMs however.

[Joolsg]

I spent 9 months reducing my 150mg pregabalin dose. I went so slowly I didn't have any side effects. Now I'm off pregabalin I feel much better as the side effects were a concern.

[wantokporo in reply to Joolsg]

Your comment a while back was very helpful about tapering, although my experience has been different. Even breaking the 25mg. capsules into 4 parts, I have had side effects unfortunately. I have learned about the body adjusting more or less after 4+ days or so, which was good to pay attention to and not freak out when the legs start moving with every reduction. I am stumped about the cognitive stuff. I guess I will see how low I can go and if my brain kicks back in...

[Munroist]

I was on 300 mg pregabalin a day and came off it completely about a year ago over a period of several months reducing very slowly. I did notice my thinking and perception became slightly clearer which made me realise that was a slightly woolly effects from the pregabalin, a little like you might get from one or two alcoholic drinks. However I did also note an occasional problem with initiating speech while on pregabalin, especially in conversations and my personal view is that this was the pregabalin somehow limiting neural activity. I think initiating speech in a conversation is quite a complex process - there is the rapid comprehension of what other people are saying to you, followed by the translation of your own thoughts into spoken language, and then the act of actually verbalising your response which requires some careful timing in a conversation. To me this has some similarities to the complexity of playing music with other people where the comprehension, creation and timing of the music could be regarded as similar to speech. I found this problem virtually disappeared after coming off pregabalin, although every now and then I get a one-off recurrence but very rarely. This is one small example of a side effect from the pregabalin which seems to have lingered slightly.

[Amrob in reply to Munroist]

Yes, yes and yes! That all sounds very familiar to me.Can I ask what you supplemented with to help with coming off pregabalin?

I'm tapering down 25mg / week and supplementing with clonazepam which isn't ideal. I don't tolerate opioids that well and my sleep specialist is loathe to have me back on pramipexole because of rapid augmentation.

[Munroist in reply to Amrob]

Hi, I didn’t supplement with anything, I was taking pregabalin at the time for nerve issues and the RLS wasn’t really significant. The smallest tablet I had was 75 mg so I reduced in stages of 75 mg, but I took several weeks for each stage and stayed at 150 mg for a couple of months as I was more active and was worried that the nerve issues would restart.When I got down to one tablet a day, I then took a tablet every other day for a few weeks so the last step was smaller than 75 mg but I believe by that stage, the effects were so small and the gaps between tablets were so big that there were times when I was effectively off the drug. I now don’t take any medication and just live with getting up 3 or 4 times a night to move and normally get some better sleep after 5am.

[wantokporo]

I tapered differently: broke 25 mg capsule open and divided into quarters. Took one quarter less for around 6 days, then reduced again. I still had side effects. Took 1-2mg. valium or Xanax every so often to help but Xanax seemed correlated with worse depression and valium with being even stupider (but the side effects don't come with labels so who knows). I do not take either to help anymore. Now I have been going even slower. Planning to stay at 100mg. for several weeks and see if the side effects get better. Strange thing is the side effects now with the reduction are different. Fortunately, for instance, the depressions don't kick in with the new reduction. Legs do act up for the first 4+ days at a new level, but so far then seem to relax.

Kicking myself because I was getting coverage at 50 mg originally and increased to try and deal with insomnia issues that continued despite the legs being calm. Should not have done that.