u/nhprmx

- EDIT: Please do not DM me to ask me to sell you meds. I will absolutely block you. -

i’ve been dealing with trigeminal neuralgia for over a year and a half now. it’s type 2, so constant during flares, going up to an 11/10 pain wise.

i’ve got a fentanyl nose spray for at home emergency situations, but last week my dosage stopped working and i had to go to the ER to get IV morphine.

i saw my GP a couple of days later and he finally prescribed something that neither my neurologist nor my psychiatrist thought of prescribing.

pregabalin.

i think it’s saving my life.

i had two days of annoying side effects (drowsiness then feeling like im on speed or coke) before being back to normal. or at least the normal i was always supposed to experience.

but almost immediately my nerve pain stopped.

then it helped other things.

here’s the kicker. i’ve got ehlers danlos syndrome. and generalised anxiety disorder (although it’s barely noticeable these days thanks to a decade of therapy), panic disorder, some OCD and chronic depression.

so i’ve got a lot of issues. loads. and they’re all linked to my brain being hyper (i’m over simplifying here). sleep? waking up 46 times per hour (according to a sleep test) and 30 minutes of deep sleep a night. chronic pain? at a 6/10 on the daily with several codeine/paracetamol tablets a day to manage it. POTS. dysautonomia. fatigue.

and my mind being constantly weighed down by all of this.

my friends keep telling me i look different. more at peace. i’ve been hugging them, which i’ve never done before. i can go out without fearing a flare. i have stopped taking so many opioids. i’m getting the nice side effect of not being hungry in the slightest and forgetting to eat (im overweight and already don’t eat much, but that might actually help me).

and my sleep? i’ve doubled my deep sleep amount up to an hour. i didn’t wake up a single time last night.

i feel like my thinking process (or brain activity) is smoother, like i can hyperfocus on work or housework and speedrun tasks efficiently.

i’ve been scrolling through this sub for a week and the only real downsides i get from it are some side effects (which i don’t have apparently), and getting used to the dosage/addiction. which honestly, i don’t care about. because i’ve already been taking opioids for a decade to control my pain. i’ve had to take fentanyl since january (i’ve had to take 68 doses to be exact, im counting them because fent addiction looks like a bitch and i don’t want to go through it, although this is medical grade and not street drugs). i will ALWAYS be on addictive meds because of my disability. correct me if i’m wrong, but it sounds like the downsides seem small compared to the upsides.

it’s like i’m rediscovering what living is like. i almost want to cry sometimes because i feel so normal. this is incredible.

thanks for reading.