Pregabalin helped my severe anxiety but now I feel trapped by it
For about a year, I used pregabalin mainly to treat severe GAD. I also struggle with chronic treatment-resistant depression, social anxiety, and ADHD, which probably made the situation more complicated overall. During roughly six months of that year, I was taking 600mg every single day. Most of the time I took the full dose at once on an empty stomach because that was the only way I could really feel the anxiolytic effect.
I honestly have to admit that pregabalin changed my life in some ways. Before it, I could barely function socially. I avoided people constantly, overthought everything, and lived in a near permanent state of anxiety and emotional paralysis. On pregabalin, I suddenly became capable of things I never thought I could do. I accepted a job, traveled alone, met online friends in real life, spent months living in a completely different environment, and actually participated in life instead of hiding from it. My social functioning improved dramatically.
But at the same time, the experience felt strangely emotionally distant. The anxiety was gone, but so was a certain sense of vividness and emotional depth. Looking back now, that entire period almost feels like a dream. I know those things happened, but the memories feel blurry and detached, like I was watching myself instead of fully living it. Sometimes I wonder if, without the drug, I would have experienced those moments more deeply and remembered them more clearly. But the paradox is that without pregabalin, I probably never would have done any of those things in the first place.
Eventually I started feeling like my progress was “drug-created” rather than truly mine, and I became afraid of depending on pregabalin forever just to function normally. So I decided to stop. The first withdrawal period was horrible. For at least two weeks I became extremely depressed, emotionally unstable, hopeless, and mentally exhausted. Eventually the acute withdrawal symptoms mostly faded, but I honestly feel like my emotional baseline never fully recovered afterward. It feels permanently lower than before.
After being off pregabalin for a month or two, I relapsed and started taking it again. This time I tried to keep the dose around 450mg per day split into two doses. But now things feel even more confusing. If I forget my morning dose, by midday I become noticeably more depressed and emotionally heavy. The shift feels so dramatic that it genuinely makes me wonder whether pregabalin itself is now contributing to my emotional instability. At the same time, I also know I was depressed during the period when I was completely off it, so I honestly can’t tell what is withdrawal, what is rebound anxiety, and what is just my original mental health issues.
I’ve avoided bzds because I’m terrified of cognitive damage, tolerance, and even worse withdrawal. So I never allowed myself to use them daily for anxiety management.
Right now I feel stuck. 450mg no longer gives me the strong anxiolytic relief it once did, but not taking it makes me feel significantly worse emotionally. At night I rely on zdrugs to sleep because pregabalin used to knock me out naturally, and now that sedating feeling is mostly gone. Without something to sedate me, I often can’t sleep at all. But the zdrugs are also building tolerance.
During the day I also take vyvanse and concerta for ADHD. Weirdly, these meds combined with pregabalin sometimes make me feel more functional and emotionally stable, but I also have a complicated love-hate relationship with both drugs.
Honestly, my overall mental state feels terrible now. I don’t know how to move forward anymore or what a sustainable life is even supposed to look like at this point.