js47

[js47]

I am on 50mg of lyrcia  twice a day and need to get off of it. I droped my  morning dose to 25mg and 50mg at night. I am now suffering from a severe panic attacks and I can't sleep right now. My goal is to get off this drug now. Any information would be appreciated. Thank You.

[Abhijeet Deshmukh, MD]

Hello.

I will not encourage you to stop the drug just because you wish to. The drug should have served its purpose before you discontinue it.

Please consult your doctor who prescribed this drug and taper off it off with his guidance.

Regards

[ggreg]

The doctor is correct.  Some drugs, you can't just go off or reduce without physician assistance.  This is because withdrawals of some modern medicines can be as bad as heroin, even tho its action seems mild.  Anytime the prescription printout says consult a doctor before stopping the medication, you should believe it.  

With that said, I take Lyrica, and I can at least tell you this:  An evening dose should last you 12 hours-plus.  That means, if you're bound and determined to get off it, you could go about it by moving your morning dose to later in the afternoon, when you notice withdrawals.  Just by doing that for a while, your evening dose can then be lowered without too much trouble, becuz your afternoon dose will come closer on the heels of the evening dose.  

The way Lyrica has worked for me, I had to increase dose until I reached a plateau.  You probably need more of the drug, not less, until your body settles into it.  Lyrica is a powerful drug, but it is also good for what ails you when it reaches therapeutic levels.  Again, your doctor will know about possibly increasing it.

If you are taking other drugs besides the Lyrica, they can have an affect on you, plus or minus depending on what it is.  Me, I also have to take a codeine preparation for another condition, and if I forget to take that, I almost immediately have sleep problems.  You see, in general, Lyrica should make you feel sleepy for days at a time, it is truly a knockout medication.  Because it lasts so long, when I have forgotten to take my nighttime dose, I can still sleep really well.  It is my other drugs that goof up my sleep, trumping the good effects of Lyrica.    

I just wanted to help you a little bit, until you can get thee to thy doctor soon.  Could be Lyrica is indeed not working for whatever medical problem it was given to you for, and thus if you go to the doc, he can give you something new, to replace the Lyrica, so you won't feel the withdrawal so much.  But there is absolutely no question whatsoever that you should not fool around with this thing too much, especially when it is so easy to just pick up the phone and make an emergency squeeze-in appointment with your doc.