My family doctor sent me to see another doctor because I was complaining about my worsening short-term memory, most likely brought on by the Gabapentin I was taking at the time.

This other doctor proscribed Topamax for the memory issues, and boy, what I story I have to tell you about those 4 months I was on Topamax! He had also told us at the time that we may have some pain relief with the use of this Rx as well.

Basically, I became so "wired" that I had no personality, no interests and apparently, no change in pain. All this is according to my wife and my friends who saw/met with me during that time I was on those drugs, because, honestly, I don't remember a damned thing!

When I went back to the Pain clinic after a few months to get my other Rx's refilled, I mentioned this to my doctors there (well, my wife did...), and they all almost started laughing. They told us that they refer to Topamax as "Dope -amax" because of its tendency to really dope up the patients, and apparently, I am one of the susceptible ones to this drug. They took me off of Topamax and about 5 days later, as my wife puts it , "I was back to my "normal" self", but no change in the levels of pain in my leg.

So, I've lost 4 months of my life (literally) trying out Topamax (Dope-amax LOL), but no real success in the level of pain.

FYI, since last Feb, I have been on a trial of Methadone for pain control, and still take Lyrica - which to date has had the best results for pain control, however is not really working on the background pain as we had hoped, so this Methadone trial hopefully will help. It's been 6 months now, and no real improvement seen yet. I think I will start new thread about this topic.