Wide-O, your case sounds a lot like mine. The balls of the feet, particularly behind the big and second toe are where I feel it the most. Largely symmetric. Pain definitely peaked right before I got sober. Now I don’t have much pain, just discomfort. The discomfort is fine in short spells but can wear me down when I have to stand for more than a few minutes.

How long after you stopped drinking did you hit your baseline? Said another way, do you know roughly when the improvement stopped and you hit the point of “this is probably as healed as the nerves will get”?

Also I’m mostly fine barefoot but shoes tend to activate the issue. Any similarities there?

Thank you again for the counsel. Scary stuff.

I am the complete opposite. I am WAY better with shoes on as the bottoms of my feet are now over-sensitive and being barefoot throws off my gait a tad.

Pedicures are no longer fun.

Thanks Icehouse. Yeah it seems like shoes press against the area on the ball of my foot. Whereas barefoot that area doesn’t make as much contact.

If you don’t mind me asking, how long did your symptoms improve for? I’m hoping for more improvement but I’m a year into sobriety and feel like I’ve stalled out. Frankly I’m going through a pretty dark period.

It was six months in a walker, over a year with a cane and it took about 4 years before I felt "normal".

My legs are still improving after 11 years....I am not 100%...I may never be.

Does that improvement even four years later include improvement in regards to pain/numbness/tingling or are those gains exclusively related more to muscle issues.

Again thanks all for answering these questions. Very helpful to have a group to talk to that’s been through or is going through this.

I never had pain.
My numbness was almost completely gone by the time I ditched the cane.

For me it's all muscle weakness in my legs and a lack of balance. I work out 2-3 days a week too...

I prefer open shoes (slippers) in house, as I don't want to feel pressure.


My improvements ended after about 4 years too, but my "mental game" in dealing with it still keeps improving if that makes sense.


OTOH I went to a music festival a few months back, and apparently did 25.000 steps in one day/evening/night). No problem the next day.


The PN... It's there, I got it. "Deal with it dude" is what I tell myself (well, a condensed version of it). The less you fight it and concentrate doing doing fun stuff, the better you feel. So in that sense I am still improving.

When you say four years that makes sense because nerves heal so slowly. And if I remember from previous posts you are tall so they’ve got further to go. 😃

Did your improvement continue through about four years with regards to improving on pain/numbness/tingling in the feet? Or was it mostly improvement in motor/muscle issues?

Thanks!!!

Indeed, 6'7" That's the thing with PN, I don't have any motor/muscle issues. I can dance or walk and you'll never notice it. It's pure pain and some numbness in my toes. The improvement was in the pain department mostly.



And of course, there were setbacks in that early period too, as this is PN, so it's not a straight line, but the first 2 years were a massive improvement - which to this day I attribute mostly to a sustained sensible diet.