Originally Posted by glenntaj

--is an anti-depressant, and many such meds are used for nerve pain; their action on the neurotransmitters can alleviate some of the unusual sensations such as allodynia (spontaneous nerve pain without an obvious causative stimulus) and parastheses (unusual nerve sensations of prickling, tingling, burning, pressure).

A lot of the people on the neuropathy often have such a med as part of their nerve relief cocktail, which also usually includes some form of anti-seizure med (gabapentin, pregabalin--AKA Neurontin and Lyrica, respectively) to "damp down" over-sensitive, over-fire-happy nerves.

It is true, though, that all of these meds can have considerable side effects, and if one goes off them, one should titrate down very carefully, and over time, so one doesn't get severe "rebound" effects caused by the neural system being freed from the med-state "down-regulation".