I’m a little nervous taking pills. It’s a long story. I have a phobia ptsd when it starts reving up dopamine and stimulating. Become maniacal or paranoid.
Anway, I’m thinking of building my confidence to introduce this to my body consistently by taking at night with sleep aid.
Anyone try doing this and what have you taken without side effect? I’m taking Benadryl, NyQuil, and starting Gabapentin. I have to take something bc i have a movement disorder that wakes me up and causes insomnia.
My father uses Gabapentin to help him sleep. Its used for all sorts of things off-label - from nerve pain, to stress/ anxiety. It has an very low side-effect profile from what I’ve heard - so for most people its very benign, and no obvious side effects.
At one time I fairly regularly took 250 mg or more gabapentin for sleep, but quickly developed a tolerance. Nowadays I can usually fall asleep without help, just the usual wind down and a guided sleep meditation. It took practice to improve my sleep habits to where they are and I’m still trying to improve REM and Deep sleep.
If I have something too exciting or something stressful going on, a 100mg gabapentin is all I need. I only use it maybe once or twice a month. Its a life saver to have it available.
That’s how I’m going to use it too. As needed.
Anticholinergics such as Benadryl appear to be associated with dementia. But hard to say if it is merely a spurious correlation.
I only use 100 mg gabapentin and sustained release low dose 300 mcg melatonin (USP grade) but off-label for GAD-induced insomnia and delayed sleep-wake phase respectively as needed. It’s clearly indicated and works for me personally, may not necessarily work for others - ie gabapentin response is variable.
Best not to mess with sleep architecture unless you know exactly what you’re doing and have a sleep doc. Sleep hygiene and CBT-I is first line for insomnia in general. I suggest one work with your sleep doc to fix that.
If you don’t mind shelling a few bucks, probably won’t hurt to add glycine and magnesium supplementation and say USP grade magnesium biglycinate in only sufficient amounts to avoid mangesium insufficiency/deficiency due to difficulty of getting the IOM recommended amounts in diet (common).
I guarantee you more than 9 times out of 10 - “smart” people taking sleep interventions for insomnia or “brain health” without a sleep doc have illusory knowledge regarding the extreme complexity and knowledge gaps regarding sleep architecture.
What’s a sleep doctor called?
Gabapentin created too much of a euphoric feeling for me. Couldn’t do it. Also, when coming off it, suffered a lot. Luckily I wasn’t on it that long…fyi for the record
Out of curiosity, why wouldn’t you want a lot of a euphoric feeling? I enjoy mine.
TongMD, Do you have a preference for gabapentin over pregabalin? If so, do you mind telling me why? Thanks.