That was my experience, too. If it really was just a flare (and sometimes that is the case), once you have been stable for awhile, you can try decreasing and see what happens. Early in my experience with TN I had a period of escalation, I maybe got up to 600 mg of Tegretol. After awhile my doc had me decrease and I got down to 200 for awhile. But after it flared a second time, I never had a time when it didn't keep escalating.

I got up to 1200 mg of Tegretol once and felt like it changed my whole personality. And I still had pain, that's when I had a radio frequency rhyzotomy, the first of three procedures/operations.

I hope you can get the pain under control and maybe you will be able to decrease the meds later on.