It amazes me that Gabepentin (neurontin) is still prescribed for bipolar disorder. It’s used in jails and by health care professionals who might not know the facts. I wrote the blog below in 2012. How is it possible that four years later, the drug is still being used for people with bipolar disorder? I’d like to hear your experiences.
Here is a very interesting article regarding the drug gabapentine. Known mostly by it’s brand name Neurontin, the drug was touted as a medication for bipolar disorder. In reality, it often caused suicidal episodes – even though it took doctors a while to catch onto this. I was given Neurontin in 1998- it was my 22nd drug and by that time I had so many drugs in my body, this one only made things worse. I became immediately and dangerously suicidal. No one believed me then!
As you all know, I believe in drug therapy for bipolar disorder. I took Lamictal (lamotrigine) for many years and it improved my life. But we have to be very careful- Lamictal and Neurontin are in the same family of anti convulsants- which proves that medications are not alike just because they are under one family.
Click here to read the article about the Kaiser Lawsuit over Pfizer’s mis-representation of the drug Neurontin.
Julie
PS: Do you feel that we are often just guinea pigs at the whim of drug companies? We need the drugs and many of us love our drugs for how they help us get on with life, but I wish we were more respected as human beings instead of money generating machines.
A salad of Neurontin!
Do you feel that we are often just guinea pigs at the whim of drug companies?… Move like a Voudou doll… A lot of the cartoons I draw seem to be about meds… I guess we should know better, whay would anyone take a med that causes more thing then it ment to cure… EVEN some of them claim that it may cause the VERY thing we take the med to help…lol
I was originally prescribed lamictal, but had bad side effects. I was then prescribed neurontin, and my life improved dramatically. I finally calmed down after a lifetime of being driven from the inside. That was in 2008. I took 900 mg a day for years and I was much easier to live with. A few years ago, I worked with my psychiatrist to gradually reduce the dose to 300 mg a day, because I realized it was why I was sleepy all day. Then I had a relapse and went up to 400mg. Another relapse 2 years ago brought me back up to 600mg a day.
I haven’t yet read the article about the suit, but I plan to. But I’ve had a really good experience with neurontin.
Dear Julie, I just wanted to say thank you for your article about people with bipolar disorder not respecting everyone, and how we can respect our friends and disrespect others,I have been doing this a long time and didn’t even know that my bipolar was causing it. Any way,I’m trying to change,I sure am glad to have a exspert on the subject of bipolar disorder,hopefully one day I will get your card system,because I’m sure you can teach me a lot from them. God bless you
Julie,
I took gabapentin with some other medications to get off seroquel for a time. Around 2012 to 2014, I think, is my best guess. I was taking lamictal at the time. I did not notice any suicidal thoughts at that time. Then I changed doctors and he convinced to give up those 3 meds and go back on Seroquel. But I am still glad to learn about this history of the drug. I experienced some side effects issues with it and other meds while trying to get back on an anti-psychotic before deciding it had to be seroquel again. Thanks for the info. Dawn
Hi Julie, I’ve had a bad bout of bipolar, I was taking 100mg of Nozinan and 500 mg Valparin for two months, then reduced it gradually to 25mg Nozinan 100mg Valparin, and it’s been fine for 6 months, am now considering reducing it again, my Doctor told me not to reduce my medication, when I told him I reducd it, because I didn’t like working around all day like a zombie, he said “well every body is different, there’s no one size fits all,” I think a lot more should be discussed regarding maintenance medication. Taking these large amounts of drugs not knowing what they are doing to other parts of our body?, we only have one body to live in after all..would be interesting to know what others are administering?