Prescribed gabapentin for years. Am I dependent or addicted?

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• mapleridge771Aug 10, 2026

  I had a similar wake up call after my dose had quietly doubled over a couple of years. For me the addiction question came down to whether I was using it only as prescribed or finding reasons to take extra, and honestly for a while I was doing the second one on bad pain days. If that's not you, it sounds more like dependence, which is still serious but usually means working with a doctor on a supervised taper rather than needing a full addiction treatment program. Either way, bringing it up with your prescriber now is going to make whatever comes next a lot safer than waiting.

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• coppercreek9204Aug 11, 2026Marked as the answer

  What you're describing sounds like physical dependence rather than addiction. You're taking it as prescribed, and the issue is your body needing it just to feel normal, not a compulsive drive to use more than directed. Gabapentin dependence is real and can come with rebound anxiety and even seizure risk if it's stopped abruptly after years of higher doses, so this isn't something to handle by cutting back on your own. I brought exactly what you described to my prescriber, the tolerance, the crawling anxious feeling, all of it, and we worked out a gradual, medically supervised reduction plan together. That conversation alone took a lot of the fear out of it for me.

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