MrsD- You commented on ... the potential for healing nerves. I saw something similar in a medical publication and asked my PN specialist about it? He seemed surprised and asked for an exact reference. So I later found it and forwarded it to him. No response. Do you know of any follow-up work or think there is a good avenue for pursuing this?
I currently take 75 MG's each night which dulls the pain for me.

Sorry, it was just a new finding. Takes a while for others to set up studies to confirm.

To produce healing. Would you be able to post the link/info?

That is pretty exciting news.

http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/sh...=amitriptyline

have now tapered down from 300mg lyrica to 75mg.

have finally settled on amtryptoline very low dose 10mg.

I have less pain then when the doc initially put me on 300mg lyrica and 25mg nortyptoline 2 years ago.

The swelling in my feet has gone down which i suspect was not from neuropathy but lyrica. My worst pain days were when swelling was highest compressing the nerves.

I will have lyrica out of my system next week.

Anyone else tried tapering down without consulting the doc? Just have a feeling that many are taking a large dosage of drugs that may not be effective anymore but continue anyway.

Does a phone call count? My wife has tapered down on a couple of things, but called the doc to inform him. Never encountered any resistance.

Doc

Hello,
I came off of Neurotin by cutting the dose in half every week, also was done with Lyrica, Tramadol and Methadone. These meds are what I have taken intermittently over 6 year span. Have been on amitripyline going into week 2 12mg at night and 12mg in the am plus a baby asprin. Pain is a little higher but way less side effects, bowel is getting back to normal. I let the doctors know after the fact. They were interested in the effects of using Lyrica. If I were starting all over it would be with amitripyline. The best pain killer I have used is Methadone, if the pain level doesn't drop taking amitripyline after 6 weeks will go back to Methadone 10mg twice a day. Don't waste your body on opiates IMO they are trash, ex OXY, VICODIN etc. Having PN IMO requires being a guinea pig since most doctors admit there is no cure if they tell you different run like hell.

I'm considering tapering off of Carbamazepine because the combination of that and Gabapentin make me feel stoned while not reducing my pain. I keep telling the doc that this is the case, but so far he hasn't seemed to consider stopping it.

But I betcha if I said that I liked being stoned, he'd make me stop taking it.