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Comment by 55555 | Hacker News Reader

Also true for benzos. Basically messing with GABA system seems to do this.

The connection for benzos is somewhat tenuous in its own right, but gabapentin actually has basically nothing to do with Benzos and does not act on your GABA system

Okay, thank you, I assumed it worked on GABA due to it being named gabapentin and because of its potential for abuse. I've just always assumed that taking drugs that make you less smart acutely might indeed make you less smart over the long-term too. I've known people who would take Gabapentin for a minor high.

Gabapentin can lead to dissociative, intoxicated-like, sedentary-like, and confusion-like state. It also partially/theoretically impairs long term memory formation similar to Ambien. I bet OD also leads to hallucinations.

I believe gabapentin was once believed to be a positive allosteric modulator (PAM) on certain GABA, and now they don’t even believe that to be the case but it somehow affects GABA expression and activity indirectly. (It’s definitely not a GABA agonist.)

It is also not very potent but there is another drug that shares its mechanism that is potent in single digit mg amounts: pregabalin (Lyrica). It is potent and kinda sorta abusable (not really) and they both can produce a super mild but benzo-ish sedation for a couple hours for a day or two.

It is apparently a coincidence that the drug seemed to resemble GABA and got its name though. Strange.

~~[EDIT: sed s/.*//] -> Benzos are anticholinergic though. I don't see gabapentin listed as such.]~~

Wait what? Benzos are not anticholinergic in any sense of the word that I know of.

My bad, I'm smoking the proverbial crack. Benzodiazepine addiction => fucks up the GABA system. Anticholinergic, anti-dopaminergic, and GABAnergic breaks different delicate bits.

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