PS to my last:

I realized I didn't answer one of your fundamental questions. Does the stuff really work? My sense is that is truly softens the blow when you can feel things building at a point when you're not yet in serious pain. That said, it doesn't put out the fire once it's really cooking. But it dampens things down a bit, at the cost of making me pretty tired if I took it all day long.

And not only is it only one of many drugs I throw at this every day, it's hard to say whether I regard it as being part the central core. And it's true that nothing short of heavy analgesics "works" in terms of really taking the pain away once it's underway. And fortunately, my liver and kidneys don't seem to mind all of the extra duty, except there was that one incident when I was ordered off Trileptal overnight, without an immediate replacement, when my blood sodium levels dropped sharply over six weeks, whereupon the cramping got so out of control that I was having scalp cramps, which were only assuaged by my inrtoduction to Neurontin in the first place. (And did it help!) But now Baclofen (50 mg./day) seems to do most of the heavy lifting in the spasm dept.

I know it seems as though I'm being equivical. It's just a matter of trying to express the utility of something that is - in my experience - better than nothing, when taken in moderation.