GABA has changed my life :)

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Is this then like drinking a bit of alcohol since that also serves as a GABA agonist? Or do you specifically seek NMDA antagonism?

Alcohol is one of many GABA agonists, including foods, herbs and some drugs (nicotine has been cited though I haven't seen studies on it).

I think I posted a list of agonists earlier in this thread.

GABA is my interest in this thread, not glutamate though, because I don't want to confuse people who haven't heard of GABA before (and it is a complex subject).

I was prescribed gabapentin about 8 months ago for nerve pain in my back. It helps with the pain a lot, but more than that, it helps with my autism symptoms: fine motor coordination, executive function, thought processing. It's been pretty major in my life. I told my psychiatrist that gabapentin had effected me this way and she was very interested in my experience. The fine motor coordination was the most startling change as I previously had not even been able to write legibly and now I can draw.

I am glad you mentioned Gabapentin. It was developed for Parkinsons; but soon it was noticed that it had "off label" beneficial uses, especially for neurological and resistant back pain, because people reported these improvements, so it began to be prescribed "off label" for them. Then some people reported the kinds of beneficial effects you desrcribe, including mood improvements for some.

I was also given Gabapentin for resistant pain (lower spine) and it worked very well for that, though unfortunately I developed a rare side effect (my tongue swelled up, so that I couldn't talk without biting the edges) and had to stop to taking it. (Drat). Nevertheless, I think it may still be worth trialling for other people. The positive effects were noticeable for me, not so much motor differences (they may have occurred though) though I did notice a more buoyant mood effect and would have kept taking it had that side effect not made it impracticable. It seems to be really good for a lot of people according to informal net chat.

I've heard that Phenibut is similar to Gabapentin and Pregabalin. Does anyone here have any experience with it?

I have seen informal reports about it on the net, though relatively few compared to Gabapentin. I haven't taken Phenibut.

Phenibut gave me migraines.

That is an impressive difference all right. Now that I have thought about it, perhaps your response shouldn't be surprising at all, because some people affected by Parkinson's have a disabling tremor in the hands as part of the whole, and it helps them with that symptom presumably as well as the other Parkinson's stuff. So it perhaps it's very effective for hand incordination in other people who don't have Parkinsons, but do have the tremor etc.

Clonazepam is used for ET too, as are the Beta Blockers and other drugs. The BB's don't have any effect on GABA in the brain that I know of, and clonazepam seems to have dramatic and beneficial effects on increasing available GABA.

GABA does not penetrate the blood–brain barrier. You can eat any amount and it won't affect your brains at all.

So it used to be thought, until the ventral pathway was identified as one route. I think the "can't" claim is like that other long lasting myth that was parroted for so long, "the brain has no lymph system". Read the thread as a whole, this has been discussed already.

Whether GABA can or can't cross the blood/brain barrier is irrelevant. I'm not injecting it into my blood stream, I'm taking it in a pill form, and there are GABA receptors in my gut.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3153004/

Thanks for that link.

Further to the idea of the brain being unaccessible to GABA (and its precursors):

It would be strange, from a biological viewpoint, if our bodies were not designed to extract the precursors to the major neurotransmitters that our brains depend upon to maintain normal functions. Of course we humans do extract what we need for that, by ingesting the amino acids in foods which are essential to the construction of neurotransmitters in the brain.

If none of them could make it to the brain, we would probably be slime at the bottom of the pond. We all get precursors to Dopamine, GABA, Serotonin, Acetylcholine and other neurotransmitters from foods. Many amino acids are termed "essential amino acids" because human life is dependent on them; we would all die without them.

Leaky gut is an issue in terms of the internal loss of precursors, it may disrupt uptake and absorption in ways both known and unknown.

The rather blase myth that ingested substances can't cross the Blood Brain barrier tends ignores the way alcohol (which is a neurotoxin) very definitely affects brain function and behaviour after ingestion, particularly in large amounts.

I can understand that many people have been taught the BB myth in a dogmatic way at school in the past and retain the idea. Teachers used to teach that the brain had a set number of cells at birth, that ingesting alcohol killed brain cells (that is partially true), and that "once they are gone, they are gone forever, you can't get any new ones". They were wrong, of course. The brain is adaptive and can grow new brain cells, and does so all the time. Dogmatism is understandable when science doesn't know any better, though the science moves on, and the old dogmas hang around for a long time after new discoveries.