Pete -

Thanks for your response. And sorry to hear about the tbi on top of everything else. With the recent unpleasantness in Mesopotamia, I imagine there have been tremendous advances in treatment and long-term care just in the last few years. I know that conflict really popularized continuous regional anesthesia. Are you keeping up with what's been coming out of Walter Reed for tbi? (I understand that tbi is the defining medical condition of the war.)

I noticed that we're on a number of common meds, where I've been taking a benzodiazipine (Xanax) for years for the control of "shooting pain" and am also on Altzheimer meds - Namenda (memantine HCL) and Razadyne (galantamine HBr) - in what's probably a vein attempt to hold back the well-documented loss of grey matter in the brain secondary to chronic pain.

It's funny how people react differently to meds, whether because their bodies produce certain enzymes at different rates, or what must be a host of other factors. For example, I am barely aware of having taken a Provigil, and certainly don't get migraines from it. On the there hand, I can't tollerate any SSRIs (or even SNRIs) because they incredibly exacerbate the cramping/spasms in my legs, for which I an completely dependent upon bacofen. And I'm now wondering if there isn't some interaction going on between the baclofen and methadone, where - only three days into this - I can be loopy 5 hours after taking a 5 mg. methadone and I know that the 10 mg. I just took will knock me on my posterior, not right away perhaps, but maybe in 2 - 3 hours.

Did you ever get that sort of a response to methadone?

Frankly, I'm just hoping that it's just because I'm a newbie. Time will tell.

thanks again,
Mike

PS I wouln't think of doing any serious drinking on methodone, and as luck would have it, am already on a BiPAP machine (sort of a modified CPAP). Now I'm thinking about getting a battery back up with alarm, in case of power failures. I never thought about this little device as a life or death matter, but with the right combination of depressed breathing and sleep apnea, it may very well be.