The emergency Spanish doctor couldn't even be bothered to tell me to taper.

I had managed to accidentally inflict a rare and debilitating type of nerve injury in my right hand making it unusable, hyper physically sensitive but also numb at the same time, and always in extreme non stop pain. Gabapentin was given to me right after the injury occurred, the electric burning nerve pain was so strong i didn't notice if it had any side effects.

For the first 8 weeks I couldn't sleep more than an hour or two a night. I was an absolute mess, couldn't eat, sleep, just dragging myself around Spanish hospitals trying to find help. I've never had opiates, but i was told traditional painkillers will not help. Over the counter ones did nothing.

Eventually after lots of scans, I was told the severed nerve would just have to grow back. Took 5 months to fully regrow 8 inches of nerve back up my arm.

And because i felt no change in nerve pain one day I just stopped the Gabapentin and that made my hellish life even worse for week.

The nerve injury cost me my new girlfriend, my new Spanish job, I had to relocate back to UK, and my father died just after getting the injury, so the horrific Gabapentin withdrawal wasn't even the worst thing that happened that spring

Hand all completely normal now. So um smoking eh :D

 

Last edited: Jan 27, 2026 at 4:05 PM

Oh @Bert Midler Biddy Fiddler, that's an unbelievable but true story. Reading about your ordeal really made me feel quite ill. It's wonderful that the nerve eventually regenerated and your body repaired itself. I sometimes think of stories where people become victims of crime, from kidnappings to torture prisons to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.

 

Thank you, i know it sounds too crazy to be true - i got smashed by the top three life stresses at once. BUT i will say, the following few months once it healed i felt so calm...like really calm, like zen, and a feeling of inner strength i never knew i had, which has stayed with me. Trail by fire as they say eh. But yeah, no one talks about nerve injuries, max respect for all who deal with them.

 

I have just been prescribed Gabapentin, I'm going to get a second opinion now. Currently coming off Pregabalin, wish I had stuck to morphine now

 

I feel your you, gabapentin is hell of a drug. I know because I'm on it. It does some weird things to my brain but the thing is: it works for the nerve pain where opioids will not.

@Kelsier Pregabalin does the same thing as gabapentin but it's stronger so you'll probably better off with gabapentin (and tapering off that). Still, it's worthwhile talking to a doctor about that.

As an aside, there are people who abuse pregabalin and get addicted and fucked up to that, but it's rarer with gabapentin, even though you can use it to get high. It's not much fun though in my opinion.

 

It's wonderful that you describe the Zen feeling of inner strength, or as I call it, the soul's essence that connects us all and everything on a spiritual level.

What you write reminds me of people who were clinically dead and then awoke and continued to live. Most of them described how every day they lived afterward was more precious and valuable than before; they were no longer afraid of death.

I saw a video of Grandmaster Wolf, a Buddhist and healer. He can move or ignite things with his developed Chi energy. There was a time when a man witnessed an accident where a person was trapped under a truck. With remarkable presence of mind, he went to the truck to help, lifted the entire vehicle, and the trapped man was rescued.

 

When I was 8 years old in the 50's, I took one of my grandfather's cigars, I thought it looked cool exhaling clouds of smoke, he caught me, lit it and told me to take a few puffs that was it. it cured me for the rest of my life. My addiction was playing music and buying the instruments i wanted.

 

Last edited: Jan 27, 2026 at 8:55 PM

But your a smokin' guitarist...go figure!

 

i have to say i feel the smell of marijuana sometimes on the streets.. i know what it is. but sad that people think it has benifits. medical benefits. i just get dizzy from that smell.. and NO, it does NOT reduce pain in the body