That is despite advice from Public Health England and the National Health Service England in 2014 64. A US study of insurance claim data from 2013 to 2015 28 found that the top 1% of gabapentin users filled prescriptions for mean (median) doses of 11,274 (9534) mg/day, representing more than three times the maximum recommended dose. Intoxications, suicide, and accidents among those using gabapentinoids have also been described using drug utilization data. In Sweden, 5.2% of 191,971 individuals with at least two consecutive prescriptions for gabapentinoids were treated for suicidal behavior or died from suicide 25.

An Australian study 22 showed that misuse-related ambulance attendances concerning pregabalin increased from 0.3 to 3.3 cases per 100,000 inhabitants from the first half of 2012 to the second half of 2017. The attendance rate was significantly correlated with prescription rates in Australia. Sedatives were often misused in combination with pregabalin (68%, 812 attendances), particularly benzodiazepines (37%, 440 attendances). A US cohort study 23 investigating 2368 drug arrests in 2016 found that 22.7% concerned gabapentin and 1.7% pregabalin. Misuse rates of gabapentin steadily increased from zero cases in 2002 to 0.03 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in 2015 according to a US survey of drug diversion 24. In that study, gabapentin was often misused in combination with prescription opioids or with illegal opiates such as heroin.

Abuse Potential of Pregabalin: A Systematic Review

Others may begin abusing Lyrica because they are trying to self-medicate their anxiety or depression. People with a history of substance abuse may also be how to flush alcohol out of your system more likely to become addicted to Lyrica. For the period 2007Q1 to 2020Q2, the search interest over time for abuse-related terms is represented in timelines for each drug and is expressed as quarterly relative search volume for overall abused-linked terms. Although it does not provide detailed analytics, some indicators, such as the interest over time, are publicly accessible. Usually, search queries contain terms related to the generic and brand names of the drug, combined together with some additional terms (e.g., “Can you get high of…?”).

1. Gabapentinoids (pregabalin and gabapentin) are a class of drugs that have been widely used-prescribed for neuropathic pain, epilepsy, anxiety, and other psychiatric disorders, while pregabalin showed promise as a treatment for alcohol dependence (1, 2).
2. For medicinal drugs, it may mean any types of inappropriate use, irrespective of whether there is any dependency involved, and misuse might be accidental or even unrecognized by the patient 13.
3. Pregabalin’s calming effect – sometimes described as a “gentle high” – can mean some users underestimate the drug’s addictive nature over time.
4. National e-prescription systems have also been proposed to prevent altered prescriptions or overlapping multiple prescriptions 112–114, especially prescription of central nervous system anti-depressant drugs from different prescribers 51.

An Irish study found an increase in pregabalin-positive poisoning deaths from 5% of all cases in 2013 to 26% in 2016 51. The odds of being pregabalin positive increased with female sex, opioid misuse, recent treatment for problem drug use, and the year of death. In a study of 104 forensic autopsy cases in the USA where gabapentin had been detected post-mortem, gabapentin was considered to be directly involved in the death in nearly half of the cases (47%) 59. The drug was prescribed legitimately to 91% of the individuals whose death was gabapentin related, and 84% had a known history of prescription drug abuse or misuse.

Gabapentin was approved in 1993 by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)initially only for treatment of epilepsy as an adjunct to anticonvulsant therapy,but in 2004 was also approved as an analgesic for post-herpetic neuralgia (8). The European Medicines Agency approvedgabapentin in 2006 for epilepsy and what happens if i report a drug dealer to the police certain types of neuropathic pain (9) and the UK National Institute for ClinicalExcellence (NICE) recommends gabapentin as a first-line treatment for allneuropathic pain (10). In fact, estimates of the off-label usage of gabapentin are reportedto range from 83–95% of all gabapentin use (11, 12), which isestimated to account for over 90% of its sales (8). Due to illegal marketing (promoting off-label uses)of gabapentin, Pfizer was fined $420 million after it was acquired fromWarner-Lambert (13). Findings from this small qualitative study represent the first apparent detailed contextual data about the misuse of pregabalin in the U.S.

If you or someone you love is struggling with an addiction to Lyrica, it’s important to get help as soon as possible. Lyrica addiction can lead to serious health problems, including organ damage and overdose. The drug binds to a protein called alpha2-delta, which is found on some types of nerve cells. Doctors may also use Lyrica to relieve people struggling with seizures because it stops convulsing. Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) statistics show pregabalin is the fourth most commonly seized drug behind cannabis, cocaine and benzodiazepines. Located in Boise, Idaho, Northpoint Recovery is proud to offer quality drug and alcohol detox as well as alcohol and drug rehab and mental health treatment programs in the Treasure Valley.

Misuse and abuse of gabapentin

A significantly higher proportion of patients with an opioid use disorder (26%) endorsed gabapentin abuse compared with 4% of those without an opioid use disorder. Studies in US and UK substance abuse populations, by Smith (2015)and Smith (2012) respectively, identified a greater likelihood for thosemisusing gabapentin to also be misusing prescription opioids (43, 44). In summary, findings from the present review suggest that gabapentin ismisused/abused internationally for recreation, self-medication, or self-harm, withan array of subjective experiences. Substance abuse populations, especiallyindividuals with a history of or current opioid misuse, appear to be at particularrisk for misuse/abuse.

Data Extraction and Assessments

Moreover special characters (i.e., queries with apostrophes) were filtered—this is a way of normalization that is also made by default. It is also important that Google’s tools eliminate repeated searches from the same person over a short period of time. We identified queries containing combinations of the drug names and the abuse-related terms from the set we defined in a previous step. Finally, we filtered the results manually, by dropping out queries unrelated to abuse. For example, while the search query “clonazepam and high blood pressure” contains both the terms “clonazepam” and “high,” it is not related to abuse.

Correlation Between FAERS and Search Analytics Domains

Published reports came from the USA, the UK, Germany, Finland,India, South Africa, and France, and two analyzed websites not specific to aparticular country. The four other respondents described misusing pregabalin to achieve a desired psychoactive effect and/or to combat feelings of opioid withdrawal. The respondent with the most experience of misusing pregabalin was participant 1001. As a teenager, she witnessed her grandmother and mother using pregabalin for pain relief. She said, “So I was like, ‘Whoa, if it makes your pain go away it has to have some type of medicine,’” which prompted her to begin stealing their medication and experimenting with it. This young woman went on to say that pregabalin must be mixed with other drugs to take effect, “Pregabalin is more like an upper if you mix it with Percocet.

Google is using search semantics to classify each search query and is expected that the more specific category will provide more accurate results. However, depending on the search popularity of some terms, there may not be enough eminem addiction results inside the category context, because Google returns only results that can be considered as big data volumes. In our study, we used only the “prescription drug” category for the extraction of our data. Although the limited literature surrounding pregabalin misuse is expanding, there exists a range of unanswered questions, including who misuses it and why pregabalin is typically misused in combination with opioids (Schifano and Chiappini 2019).