Some pregabalin support please?

[IrishLondon]

Hey everyone,

I'm Ryan - have been posting on and off the forum for several years, but first time posting to the pregabalin sub-forum.

I've had lots of different anxiety symptoms off and on for the past 5 years. The most recent one which sent me into a bad spiral was tingling, twitching and burning in my legs. And also a very restless feeling in my legs and really bad insomnia.

My GP but me on 75mg of pregabalin a day to see if that helped with the symptoms. It did a bit.

I have also been on 50mg of sertraline for 7 months and the doc recommended I go up to 100mg. This seemed to help with my anxiety and sleep but caused awful electric like pains down the back of my legs.

I've since reduced back to 50mg sert and increased the pregabalin to 125mg a day. The pain down the back of my legs is gone since reducing the sert but the really distressing restless feeling remains. Could this be the sert?

I've read pregabalin could help the restless leg syndrome and anxiety - but i'm not sure whether the drug is meant to work straight away or it had to build up before increasing the dose. Any suggestions?

Thanks so much
Ryan

[SarahH]

That depends how long you have been on the changed doses of your meds. If this has only been a week, say, then I would give it another week before making any decisions. I could be both the withdrawal of the Sert AND the fact the pregabalin is not fully in your system at the higher dose.

Keep us posted

Sarah

[IrishLondon]

Thanks Sarah

I'm afraid my doses have been all over the place for the last month or so. I've been unsure if its the meds causing my symptoms, my anxiety or something else. My GP has provided the drugs but isn't much help...she says its up to me to titrate the doses depending on how I feel. This means I've been increasing, decreasing, trying to taper off both meds at different times over the past month.

I know this is crazy. But I've been left a bit confused by my GP and when the leg symptoms kick in, I just think I have to stop these meds!

Anyway, Ive decided I my brain needs some stability. So I've settled on 50mg sert in the morning, 50mg pregabalin at lunch time, 75mg pregabalin at night. Have been on these doses for about 5 days.

I need to stay on this for a few weeks now and just hope the leg symptoms don't get worse.
Thanks so much
Ryan

[SarahH]

Hi Ryan,

125mgs of pregabalin is a very small dose, you may want to try upping that and sticking to 50mgs of Sert.
Obviously I am not a Dr but it would make sense to me to use the anti-anxiety drug if that is what you are suffering from and stick to the small amount of Sert for now.

Sarah

[hanshan]

I'd go with Sarah, and increase the pregabalin if your current dose is not completely effective. I take mirtazapine, which can cause restless legs, and it's a horrible feeling.

Restless legs syndrome can occur by itself independent of any drug. Pregabalin has been successful in treating some of those cases - see this study

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1303646

The dose was 300 mg pregabalin per day.