It started small. A pill for seizures that quietly moved into everything else. Back pain. Hot flashes. Restless nights. One drug that keeps finding new problems to solve, even the ones it was never built for.
“What do hot flashes, back pain, and insomnia have in common? Increasingly, they all lead to the same prescription: gabapentin. The anti-seizure medication has quietly become the fifth most prescribed drug in the U.S., not because seizure disorders are skyrocketing, but because doctors are writing millions of prescriptions for uses the FDA never approved.
Now, as concerns mount about dependency and long-term cognitive risks, experts are questioning whether the medication warrants closer scrutiny.
Gabapentin Prescriptions Skyrocket
Gabapentin is FDA-approved to treat two conditions, partial seizures and pain occurring with a shingles outbreak (postherpetic neuralgia). Gabapentin enacarbil (Horizant), an extended-release version of the drug, was FDA approved in 2011 for treating moderate-to-severe restless legs syndrome in adults. However, gabapentin is widely prescribed for off-label indications, everything from hot flashes to back pain.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/pill-everything-why-label-gabapentin-prescriptions-are-soaring
That’s how it happens. One quiet prescription at a time. A quick fix that becomes a habit, then a reflex.
“The use of gabapentin (Neurontin) continues to soar in the United States, often for chronic pain and other health conditions the drug is not approved to treat, according to a new analysis by CDC researchers.
In 2024, gabapentin was the fifth most prescribed drug in the U.S., with prescriptions nearly tripling since 2010, according to findings published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The number of patients prescribed gabapentin reached 15.5 million in 2024, up from 5.8 million in 2010.”
15.5 million people. That’s almost the population of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago combined. All taking the same pill. Most of them for something it wasn’t designed to treat.
And now, the side effects that used to sound small on paper are starting to look dangerous in real life.
“In 2023, more than 41 000 individuals older than 65 years died from falls. Among older adults, the number of deaths from falls is more than from breast or prostate cancer and is more than from car crashes, drug overdoses, and all other unintentional injuries combined. More importantly, the mortality rate for falls among older adults in the U.S. has more than tripled during the past 30 years. In contrast, death rates due to falls decreased during the past 30 years in other high-income countries.”
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2837039
It slows people down. Makes them dizzy. One wrong step on a stair and they’re gone. That’s not pain relief. That’s risk being repackaged as comfort.
“The anti-seizure drug gabapentin is used to treat epilepsy, nerve pain after shingles and restless legs syndrome by affecting chemical messengers in the brain and nerves.
Common side effects include dizziness, drowsiness, headaches and nausea. Now, a new study out of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland warns that gabapentin can significantly increase the risk of dementia and mild cognitive impairment in people taking it for chronic low back pain. “Our findings indicate an association between gabapentin prescription and dementia or cognitive impairment within 10 years. Moreover, increased gabapentin prescription frequency correlated with dementia incidence,” the study authors wrote this week in the journal Regional Anesthesia & Pain Medicine.
Researchers pored over records of 26,400 patients who had been prescribed gabapentin for persistent low back pain between 2004 and 2024 and 26,400 patients who didn’t get a prescription.”
https://nypost.com/2025/07/11/health/common-pain-drug-can-increase-dementia-risk-by-up-to-40-study/
Now there’s evidence it’s tied to memory loss too. Dementia. Confusion. The kind that doesn’t go away when you stop taking it.
A drug that was meant for seizures has become a quiet dependency for millions. And no one seems to be asking how much more the body can take before it starts to forget what normal even feels like.