I beg to differ with you guys. As a nurse, when i have a patient who says he's in pain, one of our descriptors is listed as numbness. So to a degree, numbness can be painful. I only have numbness and it was preventing me from being able to fall asleep at night. Just as an experiment, i tried taking gabapentin along with my dinner to give it time to kick in prior to going to bed. I promise you it works every time. It calms my feet enough so that I can easily fall asleep and that has been such a blessing. You could say the gabapentin just "puts" me out but that's not true. I've taken plenty other sleeping pills and the numbness keeps me awake. Needless to say the numbness reappears the next morning but I'm in the process of getting my doctor to write me a prescription for gabapentin ER so that it doesn't interfere with my daily activities but stays in my system. It might not work for you but it's been a blessing for me. I'll let you know how the extended release works.