With any drug that isn't life or death, I like to every so often, taper off the drug until I'm sure that it is actually doing what it is supposed to do. That is how I ended up realizing that Lyrica, (Pregabalin), was doing me no good. This is more important than ever now that we are in the age of, "no new drugs, just new names", as one of my doctors likes to put it. We pay extremely high prices for drugs in the U.S. New versions come out and cost 10 times what the old ones cost. We need to keep in mind the new version has to only be a tiny bit better than the old version to claim it's a major break through. Also now that they want no one getting narcotics no matter how dire your situation is, we will be offered any form of snake oil they can dole out to assuage their conscience form the guilt of doing nothing at all and being unwilling to stand up for what they no is right. When ever a doctor wants to give me a different or new drug, the first thing I ask is, "was this drug designed and tested for treating exactly what I have or was this drug intended to treat something else and this is an 'off label', use of the drug". You see, once a drug is tested for one thing, if it has been proven to be safe or at least the side effects are known, a doctor can try that drug for any reason they wish. Neurontin and Lyrica are both proven safe and effective for helping to control seizures. There primary purpose was never as a pain med. Because they helped to stabilize one kind of brain malfunction some doctors thought they might help control neuropathy, which is a very specific kind of nerve pain that can have many, many different origins. Anecdotally, it would seem that some folks get relief from that pain with the use of these drugs. Reading through this thread I think it is obvious that very few people find relief from pain from taking it and many people have serious aside effects from it's use. My own experience with this drug was that it was worthless despite the fact that Lyrica is very expensive. It also has a unique pricing structure where by you don't pay based on how much you take, you pay based on the fact that you do take it, i.e. a prescription for 50 mgs. per day would cost me the same amount as a prescription for 1200 mgs. per day.

When you ask yourself how badly is the pharmaceutical industry willing to treat it customers remember that a vial of insulin, which is manufactured under a patent that it's inventor sold for $1.00 so he could be sure everyone could get it as it is a life saving drug, costs $6.00 to manufacture and in the U.S. it sells for $600.00 dollars. The industry has no research or development costs to recoup, which is what they always use to explain high drug costs. In addition, most research into new drugs is funded by the U.S. taxpayers.

It will be interesting to see what happens to the production figures for opiods no that almost no one can get them. But alas, we will never know one way or the other since our government has made it illegal for the Drug Enforcement Agency from investigating the manufacturers of opioids.