DOSE:

300-1200 mg

oral

Pharms - Gabapentin

(pill / tablet)

BODY WEIGHT:

120 lb

I am female, 43 years old at the time of this writing and this report discusses my recreational use of Gabapentin over almost 10 years. At no time during the years covered in my report did I use any prescription medications. I took psilocybin mushrooms twice, drank alcohol less than 5 times a month in small amounts and took the occasional ibuprofen or tylenol- that's it.

I started using G. recreationally because I had been an occasional pot smoker but was afraid of drug testing at work. I had done a little research and knew from the beginning that Gabapentin was not as safe and friendly as good ol' cannabis, but getting high is fun, so caution be damned. It turned out I really liked it. I found the effects would come on an hour or so after taking it and last 6-8 hours. 300 mg made me cheerful, alert and noticeably stoned but still able to act sober if I wanted to, with a very pleasant body buzz that made walking, dancing, etc. very nice. Things looked unusually beautiful, especially nature and, oddly, my own face in the mirror. I felt like my best self, with a special sparkly edge I can only describe as golden.

600 mg intensified these effects and it was harder to seem not-high in public. There was some disorientation, trouble reading maps and navigating familiar places. I rarely went above 600 mg and when I did it was usually 800, which would start to become sedating but could be really nice for long bus or train trips with headphones in. Once I took 800 and went to an art museum. It was fantastic but my memory of it is vague- definitely some amnesic effect. I took a higher dose once, probably 1200 mg, and it was more than I wanted. No one around knew I was high and I wanted to keep it that way so I went where no one would bother me and spent the afternoon mucking out my neighbor's goat barn. I felt very strange, sedated and a little dissociated. At some point I lay down in the barn for awhile and had some strange little CEVs, blobby shapes, nothing special.

So, to make a long story short, I was fond of this new molecule and indulged in it occasionally over almost 10 years. Sometimes I would go 6 months without using it, every now and then I would use it 2-3 times in one month. I started smoking pot again and combined the two, which gave the experience a slightly psychedelic edge, with trippy thoughts and mild time dilation. I looked forward to my "golden afternoons".

In May of 2021, I went on a weeklong vacation. I had used Gabapentin several times already that year. My mental health was not great, and during the vacation I used Gabapentin and marijuana fairly heavily to try to enjoy myself. After returning home, I fell into a depression where I did not have a single good day for over a month. I feared I had broken my brain and stopped using gabapentin for good at that time. I did several things to improve my situation, including getting more sleep and Chinese herbal formulas, and unexpectedly got the chance to try LSD for the first time, which was surprisingly helpful.

It is now 5 months later and my mental health is much better, though I have occasional off days. I will never use Gabapentin again, though I sometimes miss it. It may be relevant here that I have 2 close friends who were prescribed Gabapentin for pain. Both had to stop taking it. One found that it caused severe insomnia lasting 6 weeks, another became suicidal. Neither one took it for more than a couple of weeks.

Exp Year: 2012-2021	ExpID: 115856
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: 43
Published: Aug 25, 2023	Views: 300
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Pharms - Gabapentin (183) : Combinations (3), Retrospective / Summary (11), Health Problems (27), Glowing Experiences (4), Not Applicable (38)