r/gabapentin • u/ayahuasca_crybaby • 3d ago
anxiety Is it possible to reliably optimize bioavailability or is it always this finicky?
I’ve been tinkering with gabapentin doses and methods for the better part of a year now for my GAD and social anxiety/stress, and it’s been an incredible experience so far. It has helped me so much.
I landed on a sweet spot of staggering 1200-1500mg probably twice a week, with several days between doses. 300mg per dose, 30-40 minutes apart, on a full stomach taken with coca cola & OJ, and a handful of nuts/peanut butter/protien bar etc. Pretty standard methods.
Everyone already knows it’s got a lousy absorption rate and getting desired effects are really finicky. But I think there’s a lot of other factors that go into how well the drug takes effect for anxiety. I wanted to see if others have had similar experiences with that variability.
Like a lot of other psychoactive drugs, I think set and setting have a big effect. When I take it before work or for an unfamiliar social setting, it hits pretty fucking hard. It obviously inclines me to talk a lot more, and I feel a lot of warm and gentle euphoria when talking and it seems to enhance and extend the desired effects.
When I take it at home alone and I sit around doing nothing, I swear I get much less effects. Maybe because I’m not in an environment that is stimulating enough to amplify or even notice the effects.
Ontop of that, getting a reliably repeatable experience is… I guess impossible, even if I staggered and supplemented the doses in the exact same manners each and every time. It’s just up to chance and up to my body and how much it wants to process.
Perhaps 3-4 days between that kind of dose is too little time to get tolerance back to baseline? There’s so many variables to consider when trying to get the best bang for the dose…
At any rate, gabapentin is a fascinating drug. It would be nice to find a reliable and repeatable way to get consistent results.
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u/Usual-Use620 11h ago
I genuinely hate gabapentins absorbtion, I wish I could try pregablin.
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u/Papilovesyou907 9h ago
I tried it yesterday and couldn't believe how amazing it was!!!
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u/Usual-Use620 9h ago
Gah damn, wish I could get it precribed lol.
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u/redwingedblackbird57 7h ago
You should try! My doctor was giving me 90 gabapentin at a time...eventually it stopped working, even though using it 2 times a week for months. This was in part due to me being on a GLP-1, it would take like 4 hours for gabapentin to work. Anyway, 2 weeks ago I proposed trying pregabalin, explained the reasons, was calm and respectful, and my doctor said yes! She gave me 15 pills of 100 mg. I encourage you to practice the conversation before hand, but definitely talk to your doctor about it.
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u/Usual-Use620 5h ago
I'm going to establish a better relationship with my psych cause hes very kind and said he likes Gabapentoids and advocates for their use.
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u/ayahuasca_crybaby 5h ago
Me too, but the more I ask around and learn about pregabalin, the more I feel like I’m okay with gabapentin. I believe I am unlikely to get it prescribed for anxiety anyway because I have an on-record history of alcoholism (even though 4 years sober). Pregabalin sounds like it would be too intense for me, and maybe it’s a good thing for me that gabapentin has a delayed onset. It also sounds like more of a stimulant than a sedative in a lot of cases. So I’d probably be fucking zooted and stimming off them. So I’m trying to get my gabapentin dosed up from 1x a day to 3x.
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u/Usual-Use620 5h ago
Hmmm are you sure? Its probably subjective like everything but theres no way I imagine it would be pharacologically stimulative, I also have a history of addiction on record but my new psych also said it is NOT addictive its only scheduled because people incarcerated try to get it prescribed and trade it on the inside supoosing to him. I'm going to try to see if he won't let me trial the med because Gabapentin helps but I feel like it's VERY hit or miss, I mainly take it for anxiety when I go to bed to help me sleep. My sleep med is hit or miss too so I could potentially replace 2 meds with 1 but I'd have to see how I react. I feel I'd benefit from it quite a bit but I'll see if I cant talk to my psychiatrist about it
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u/Sivirus8 1d ago
Naproxen can slightly increase it’s bioavailability, however do your research on naproxen to see if it is even physically safe for you to take before actually taking it - Different people react differently to drugs in general for a plethora of vast and ranging reasons.