I WAS IN HORRIFIC PAIN FOR DECADES. IN SIX WEEKS, MY LIFE CHANGED
The first time I went to the doctor about my pain was in my late twenties. It was 1972, the year I married my first wife, and I was having problems in the lead-up to the wedding day.
Every time I told them I was struggling with pain, he or she would say to me: "Where is it?"
On that day, the pain may be in my wrists—so bad that I couldn't move my hands—so, two weeks later I would go for an X-ray, but it would show nothing wrong because by that point the pain had moved to my shoulders.
For years it went on like that. Initially, I thought I might have arthritis, because that affects the joints, but eventually, I realized that my pain was different, because it changed and moved around every day.
I was tested for arthritis, among other things, but I just got fed up with going for tests, so I learned to live with it.
In the late 1990s I had a job that involved doing long-haul flights on a regular basis, traveling to Australia, South America, Central America, South Africa, and Canada.
I could never sleep, because I could never get comfortable in the chairs, so I spent the entire night walking around the aircraft, just trying to keep my body moving.
Then I would arrive at my destination and have to get straight to work. It was a horrendous time. In 2010, I was forced to quit that job because I couldn't cope with the flying anymore.
My pain would impact me in other ways, too. Often my wife would say: "We've been invited to a party on Saturday, it starts at 9 p.m." There was no way I could go. By 9 p.m. I would be in bed, asleep. In fact, getting past 9 p.m. felt impossible; the painkillers I was taking made me feel very drowsy.
For ten years my second wife and I didn't go on vacation, because even short-haul flights—the process of going through customs and checking your bags, then a long transfer—I couldn't cope with. It was very much impacting her life.
She goes to the gym regularly and is very fit. I wanted to go with her, but just couldn't do it. If I spent 30 minutes on the running machine, I wouldn't have been able to get out of bed the next day because my legs were hurting so much. It was just horrendous.
I loved DIY and gardening, but for many years was unable to do either. I used to have a number of classic cars, and I loved cleaning and polishing them, but I had to sell them because I couldn't take care of them anymore. It just affected every corner of life.
Over the years I continued to have blood tests, until around a decade ago, when my primary care physician diagnosed me with fibromyalgia, a long-term condition that causes pain all over the body.
At the time I was taking codeine phosphate, which had never really helped, and which he said was completely the wrong painkiller for my type of pain.
He prescribed various medications, none of which helped at all, until he tried one called gabapentin. It worked, but the side effects were horrendous. I had no memory, I couldn't concentrate, and often felt panicky. It felt as though I was in another world. It was really strange.
I spent a year on that medication, until a friend of mine, who also suffers from fibromyalgia, suggested speaking to a clinic about a drug called low-dose naltrexone (LDN).
I phoned them up and asked about it, which led to a few consultations over the phone and video call. Eventually, I was put on the medication, starting off with a very low dose, and building up to the dose I'm on now over a matter of weeks.
It was like a miracle. Within six weeks of taking the medication, I had no pains related to my condition. All the agony I was in for all those years has completely gone, and the beauty of it is that I experienced no side effects.
When I realized the medication had worked, I was elated—I was almost dancing around the house. It was amazing.
Low dose naltrexone and fibromyalgia: What does the evidence say?
According to Britain's National Health Service (NHS), there are "some small studies showing benefit in patients with fibromyalgia and complex regional pain syndrome...Two larger studies in fibromyalgia are currently under way in Denmark and Spain."
The Danish trial authors wrote ahead of their ongoing study, per the National Institutes of Health: "Low-dose naltrexone (LDN) is used widely as an off-label treatment for pain despite limited evidence for its effectiveness. A few small trials with a high risk of bias have investigated the effect of LDN on pain associated with fibromyalgia in women, but larger and more methodologically robust studies are needed."
Since I've been taking LDN, I have done things I thought I'd never be capable of doing again. I've recently helped fit a bathroom and am now back at the gym lifting weights.
When I was younger, my pain threshold was always quite high, but as I've gotten older I believe it's dropped a bit, and it was actually becoming very difficult to get through life; I think I became very depressed for a number of years.
I had become a miserable person; how my wife put up with me I don't know. But she can't believe the change in my mood. I'm just a different person. I'm happy again. Happy because I'm not in pain.
My advice to anyone with chronic pain is don't suffer from it. I mean no disrespect to the doctors who treated me over the years, but I was convinced for so long that this was something I would just have to live with—and it wasn't.
Brian Walker is an ambassador for the Bodyline Medical Wellness Group.
All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
As told to Newsweek's My Turn associate editor, Monica Greep.
Do you have a unique experience or personal story to share? Email the My Turn team at [email protected].
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