Pregabalin

Hi. Has anyone been prescribed Pregabalin? A hospital dr put me on this pill and I’ve really no idea why! I dont have epilepsy which seems to be the main reason the drug is prescribed. The only thing I complained about was my strange head feeling but can’t see how Pregabalin will help. Stupidity I didn’t ask him why he had prescribed it but didn’t realise what it was until I looked at the prescription once I got home.
I’m just not keen on taking a Class C drug which can become addictive etc etc. Anyone had experience of taking Pregabalin?

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Hi Apple
It tends to be one of the first medicines assigned for pain following a stroke.
You are right that it is an epilepsy drug, that’s it’s primary aim but it was later discovered to have pain relief properties.

Do you mean a woozy/thick head ?
I haven’t come across pregablin being used for that. I would be tempted to query it with your GP ?

It can have side effects, not everyone by any means. Dizziness, tiredness and being a bit spaced out but those normally disappear after a bit.
Hope this helps
Cheers
Nigel

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Thanks Nigel. Yes its a thick woolly head but nor painful. Have spoken to GP who also can’t understand why it was prescribed but said try it for a while just in case it helps. Only been taking it for a week and think it has made me feel a bit wobbly at times and possibly even more tired than usual but other than that no effect. Will carry on with it for a while just in case it turns out to be my miracle cure!!!

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I was prescribed it for nerve pain but I ended up in hospital with irrational paranoia, the hospital doctor took me off it straight away, questioning why the doctor had chosen that particular medication in the first place. I think it can be beneficial if approached in a sensible way, in some respect it acts like a benzodiazepine but is actually less addictive. So, I would say that the doctor has prescribed it to you for its calming and euphoric effect because it is also, commonly, used to treat higher levels of anxiety.

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Good grief Rups! That’s put me right off it! Not that I ever keen on it in the first place! Will give it a few more days but so far it’s had no effect on my strange head. Thanks for your help

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Keep in mind, it takes Pregabalin a few weeks to get going in your system, it might work for you. I know a fellow stroke survivor, ten years post stroke, who started taking Pregabalin, and has found it calms him more. One man’s tonic is another man’s toxin. I guess what is key is determining what is going on with your head. I have awful head days, that I just can’t describe to anyone sufficiently. It’s like all my senses are in gridlock, it’s a detached sort of fug. I must have a crack at trying to write down what I feel, but when my head is that way, writing is the last thing I want to do. If it is difficult for us to describe to ourselves, imagine how almost impossible it is to communicate to a doctor.

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MrMK and EmeraldEyes. Sorry can’t reply to your posts as I can’t get into them to read them. Maybe due to the so called “minor glitch” which seems more major than minor

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Ah, so you’re one of them that’s still locked out. I was last weekend, I did manage to find a back door in but even that was closed by Monday. Hopefully by next Monday you’ll be back in.

In the meantime good luck with your medication, and remember if it starts affecting your moods adversly stop the med and your doc. There’s no point taking them if they’re just going to add to your symptoms, particularly if the don’t relieve your fog symptoms. :slightly_smiling_face:

Thanks Emerald. Yes very annoyingly I am still sort of locked out! Can read some posts but not others.
No idea what the Consultant thought Pregabalin would do and stupidly and unlike me I didn’t ask! It may be making this head thing a bit easier but I have only been on it for a week so I will carry on for a bit. Speaking to my GP next Thurs so will see what he thinks. Thanks for getting back to me

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What tech symptoms are you having?

I’m having a trouble imagining that it is something to do with discourse because the URL to access the forum has been changed.

That is; if you can see the forum you can access all and any part.
Since you can quite clearly post you are also logged in and recognised as authorised

@EmeraldEyes What do you mean by a back door?

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Simon. I still can’t see a message from Mrs5K even though I have downloaded the Discourse thingy!! When I click on it nothing happens. Not the end of the world.nsure if she sees this she will send it again

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By searching my user name with stroke forum on google, it comes up with posts I’m active in. Click on any of them got me in to the forum. But that access was closed off completely once Monday came around after the switch over was complete. It’s only a short window of opportunity left open when there’s a major switch-over like this one. I found it on another forum years ago having similar issues when they were changing over ownership of the forum.
Apples way of using getting in through email updates is limited to the posts she was active in. Where as I could access everything as normal but only for that weekend because then we all to re-log in.

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Hi @EmeraldEyes
Well that’s an interesting round the houses route :slight_smile:

The forum was on the URL https://forum.mystrokeguide.com

and that will still work as evidenced above which is a link to…

https://forum.mystrokeguide.com/t/welcome-what-we-wish-wed-heard-at-the-start

Indeed it must because they haven’t run the conversion program that changes all the embedded links within posts over to the new domain name of onlinecommunity.stroke.org.uk Which now works in parallel because if I change the above domain name to the new one

It also works and if you create a link to a post now you get the new domain generated automatically whereas on the 12th march which was the day after claimed migration discourse was still generating the old link.

Expect what was done sometime last week was that the DNS record for the forum was changed from an A record to a CNAME but I suspect at this point you lose interest :slight_smile:

Ciao
Simon

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Hi Apple
I have recently started taking Pregabalin. I started because i now have diabetes and my feet start to burn when i get in bed. The doctor explained to me that this should help numb the burning sensation before i sleep. So i have improved my diet and i take this to help get to sleep. It is a miracle drug for taking the pain away but yes, the head does take off, so it is recommeded on the packet that you don’t drive or operate machinery etc.
If you are unsure, before taking it, speak to the Doctor / Phamacist about it.

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Hubby was prescribed it after his stroke as he developed a facial tic initially. Once this had ceased he was taken off of it within a couple of months.

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Don’t know if it helps it can be for nerve pain as well or to calm the nerves down in the body

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Hello,
I’ve been using Pregabalin for 2yrs since I had Stroke. To be honest, i’m not sure if it makes a difference on the pains in my full right body. Currently I’m taking 150mg twice daily and supported with paracetamol.
I’m now planning to come off the medications and just use mild paracetamol to support with the pains.

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Hello Temil. Well Im coming off Pregabilin. Although I think it did make a slight differyto the pains in my head Im not prepared to spend the rest of my life half asleep. Will speak to my GP tomorrow but pretty certain he will agree with me

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I am right hemiplegic, I have been prescribed Pregabalin (225 mg x 2 daily m&e) since 2007 for stroke pain and spasm control, It sems to work,

On the other hand there is the tale by the young man who found he was sharing a railway carriage with an elderly lady. At intervals, probably about the mile markers, she would tar a strip from a newspaper in her bag and throw the strip out of the carriage window.

After a while, the young man succumbed to his curiosity, Leaned forward, and asked her, “Excuse me , but I observed that you were putting pieces of paper out of the window about once a mile. Why is that?” She replied, “Its to keep the tigers away, of course.” Puzzled, he said, “But there are no tigers here.”, and she just looked at him with a knowing smile.

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Love it Geoffrey! Pleased it works for you. Probably would work for me but really cant spend 50% of the rest of my life asleep!!

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