I'd like to know your experience with gabapentin use in treating insomnia and anxiety ?
neurontin
- Thread starter Piaget
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I have personally prescribed neurontin just a handful of times for insomnia, primarily in those who have substance abuse or cirrhosis of the liver; unfortunately, the feedback that I've gotten is that it hasn't really helped. For those that have taken it for anxiety, I have gotten better feedback. there are some who have told me they feel more dizzy and drowsy on it, but there is a subset of patients who do report improved anxiety. I also like to use it to help with menopausal hot flashes, and I have pretty good feedback that it has helped provide relief from those.
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Our local mental health authority recently went nearly benzo free recently and this is now the drug of choice for anxiety it seems. On inpt side, fair response overall with good response in a 20-30% of pt's though confounding factors likely given lots of moving parts during relatively short inpatient stay.
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Some patients say it works amazing for insomnia - others say it does nothing.
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I parrot the above. It seems to either work miracles or do nothing at all.
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In my experience, it seems to have a better chance of working well in the alcohol-dependent. My guess is that it gets endogenous GABA production going again in folks who have suppressed that with alcohol.
Good article about it in this month's Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine presenting some evidence may be useful for those tricky perimenopausal females with microarousals from sleep leading to perception of sleep disruption. I admit I have used it for just this over the past year (one of my go-tos for alpha intrusion in fibromyalgia sufferers). When you're looking for just a little stability in sleep architecture, it seems to have some benefit.
Then again, I am one of the biggest proponents of "If you provide the patient with the expectation that it will work, it stands a better chance of working" and make no bones about the fact that my experience is far from being a randomized, placebo-controlled trial.
Then again, I am one of the biggest proponents of "If you provide the patient with the expectation that it will work, it stands a better chance of working" and make no bones about the fact that my experience is far from being a randomized, placebo-controlled trial.
virtually no data suggesting good efficacy for either......If you randomly use it from time to time and try to justify it(as so many of us do), sure, you'll find that it 'sometimes works'....that is true if I gave a pt a nexium as well.
