Originally Posted by canklecat

Recent studies indicate gabapentin has little or no use in back pain or most injury related pain.

It had zero effect on my pain from injuries to my back, neck and shoulder; and zero effect on my headaches (variously diagnosed as migraine, cluster, trigeminal neuralgia and "I dunno").

Rumors and myths about the efficacy of gabapentin persist for a couple of reasons: (1) pharma reps engaged in unethical practices to encourage doctors to prescribe gabapentin for ... anything and everything; (2) under threat of being disciplined for prescribing opiates or muscle relaxers, many doctors, NPs and PAs would authorize only gabapentin rather than hydrocodone or Tramadol, both considered low risk, low potency analgesics before the recent anti-opiate hysteria and propaganda.

There's some evidence that gabapentin helps some patients with neuropathy. My mom had residual pain from a late life bout with shingles, and gabapentin did help her with that. It did absolutely nothing for her chronic pain from multiple injuries and surgeries for back, shoulder and knee pain.

And I heard one patient who claimed to have fibromyalgia say gabapentin helped her. But some medical professionals still don't consider fibromyalgia to be a real thing, or at most an incorrect diagnosis for other real diseases. I have no opinion on whether fibromyalgia is real, but in my case my similar symptoms turned out to be due to Hashimoto's, an auto-immune disease that eventually killed my thyroid. The symptoms were virtually identical to those claimed for fibromyalgia. So I wonder how many people out there who think they have fibromyalgia actually have misdiagnosed serious diseases that aren't being treated properly because they lack access to competent medical care. In my experience, many medical professionals tend to disregard generalized complaints of pain, lethargy, malaise, etc., that don't present with obvious symptoms that can easily be diagnosed. Particularly for Medicaid/Medicare patients who live in areas without access to a broader choice of health care systems.

Some folks do report some relief from anxiety, but you can get the same benefit from non-prescription GABA, an amino acid supplement. I take it some nights before bed and it helps, pretty comparable to a low dose of melatonin. But it ain't for pain.

While gabapentin and GABA are loosely related, they aren't the same thing and studies show gabapentin doesn't bind to GABA receptors. I'm sure gabapentin has been effective and satisfactory for some patients with certain ailments, but it's not the do-everything wonderdrug claimed by pharma and some doctors.