Charles, concerned with my taking a nerve medication, spoke to me on this the day before I left Baltimore this September. Hearing my track record with the drug, he suggested I write this article on my experience.
June 9, 2023, I was crippled, crawling back from the side street where I collapsed using a walking stick in two hands to stagger towards the bus stop. I had Kaiser, and the folks who could give me a lift all worked day turn in the trades. It would be a few more weeks before I could get to the urgent care. My only boyhood friend, Rick, who has since passed, was real bad with the cancer. I had Doc dread X-Ray me and shoot me up with cortisone so I could take the train to Ricks, which was hell. He showed me that the lumber had collapsed on the right, at least one disc out, bone on bone from L-1 up to L-5.
I then got diagnostic showing three torn muscles, a torn labrum in the hip, only one ruptured disc, and, worst of all, an impinged, stretched and twisted femoral nerve. The torn hip ligament is there to remain as is or get worse. The spine, I jacked that up, back in place with exercises I developed and adapted from two forms of yoga. The nerve, numerous doctors suggested was dmaged for good. But Doc dread, did say, after beating my knee with a hammer and getting ZERO reflexes, but noting that I had gained back some of the muscle that had cavernously shrunken away from the ever twitching nerve, “You might be the guy to get the nerve back.’ that was said in such a way but the eternal optimist that refused pain medication even after being crushed by a tree and having the muscles blow off of his legs and ribs puncture his lungs, that I was to understand that he had yet to see a recovery from that nerve injury. It is though, a rare injury, said Doctor Park, which he had only diagonosed in one other person, a retired ballet dancer.
Both doctors suggested gabepentin. Doc Park said, “It was developed for seizures and was a terrible seizure medication. It has shown benefits for neuropathy and has minimal side effects.”
The hand out tells you the side effects, nausea, dizziness, diarreah, cognitive decline, memory loss and tells you not to use with alcohol, a warning I dd not notice until six months into taking it when I began blacking out when having more than six drinks. And here, I thought light drinking would be fine, keeping it under ten drinks, but no, another buzz kill drug…
The recommended dosage begins in 3 day upward cycles of 300 MG capsules:
3 days 1 in morning
3 days 1 in morning and evening
3 days 1 morning, noon, evening
There, at 900 MG per day, I was able to use crutches. Also, when I put my hand within a couple inches of the nerve, not touching the leg, the nerve stopped reacting. Previously, placing an object—like pants—within an inch or two would cause the leg to heat up and burn, the hairs of the leg to stand straight out. Doc park had a name for that and said, “yes, that is a thing.” Oh yes, I was also able to sleep again after 7 weeks of shivering like a dying leaf.
Every 3 days you add 1 pill, breakfast, dinner, lunch
At 2, 2 and 2, or 1800 milligrams, I was walking with a cane. This was not simply pain, but the calming of the constantly, visibly banging nerve, which prevent the knee fro bending or straightening, stuck at a 45 degree angle.
At 2100 I was walking. I was sleepy all the time, though.
At 2400 I could step and drag, able to box and stick spar, but I was losing some memory, was a bit dizzy and felt strange.
A couple of times, pushing strength training, I raised the dosage to the maximum, of 2700, and did not like the way I felt. I slept great, but could only write surrealistic fiction, like SPQR.
Rick noticed some of these side effects, told me that the yellow pills were “Bad, bad—you don’t even want to know. They say there are no side effects, but…”
At this point I would have been OK witah sure diagnosis of cancer from the gab, since walking and boxing, and even having sex with a lady, was far preferable to moaning on the floor with my bent knee on the coach while I passed out from the pain, until the leg shifted and the pain woke me again.
Noticing my dosage, this past year, as we compared exercise and nutritional notes, Rick said, ‘the half life of that is six hours. Why would you take it three times a day? That is for eaters. You’re not an eater. You don’t sleep more than four hours. Work on drawing you dosage down towards one every six hours, or four a day.”
I began taking Rick’s advice in May. I gave up the strength training. The leg will just have to stay where it is. I went from 3 quarter squats to 60 half squats, from 5 flights of stairs in a row to 61. I’m 62, almost 63, I’ll take it. I’m too old to expect improvement in any physical activity. But, I can still hope that I have my best book ahead of me.
In may I went from bouncing between 2100 and 2400 to staying at 2100 thru June.
June and July I did 1800 with a bump to 2100 on training days, roughly 3 in 7.
August and September I maintained 1800 a day.
In October, this month, I began pushing my last dosage, the 6th pill, to the middle of the next morning.
November I will be training a lot and will do 1800 on training days and 1500 off.
December the intention is to stay at 1500 most days.
January I hope to make 1500 the ceiling and begin using 1200 on rest days. I suspect that the bump down to 900 will be the tough one, maybe at bedtime, then after morning writing, before training and then after training. Eventually, perhaps I will be able to use it purely to suppress that crazy nerve during activity.
I am curious.
Thank you for your support in this weird pursuit.
Han Silo, than you for that pint of beer and dinner tonight. Since I suspected we’d have a drink, I pushed off the evening dosage until after our meeting, and the completion of this writing.
-JL, San Francisco, CA, Wednesday 10/29/25
