Long time lower back pain sufferer in need of advice

[NemLou]

I found this forum by mistake whilst having an annoying reaction to my pain medication for my lower back. I'm 26 and have had lower back issues since I was 7. It's only in the past 6-8 years that I've been properly medicated and only found out in the last two years that I have a protruding disc. I have had a lot of pain medication but tramadol works for me MOST of the time. I was given it around 6 years ago and I cannot go without it as the withdrawals are so intense, I can't handle it. I have to take them or I can't go to work or do things I enjoy. The past year or so I have been having restless legs and arms at night. It's not every night but when it does happen, I get so annoyed and irritated by it that I can't sleep (like right now, it's 3am and I've been trying to sleep for atleast 3 hours). I was prescribed amytriptalin to help with sleeping and to stop my restless legs but it doesn't seem to do anything when I take it and I've been on it for the best part of 3 years. I've tried acupuncture, pain management and physiotherapy and only acupuncture seems to help out of the three but I no longer qualify to have it on the NHS as I have had two lots of treatments and will have to jump through hoops to get a referral to go back again which will take some time to do. I was just wondering if I'm not alone in having these symptoms on an irregular basis as all I've found on this forum is people suffering from the same symptoms I'm having whilst going through withdrawals. I take 100mg tramadol twice a day with 100mg paracetamol as soon as I wake up and just before I go to sleep as per doctors instructions. I'm on a lot less dosage now than I was when I was first prescribed it and I had really itchy skin and hallucinations/fits of giggles when I first started taking the higher doses (100mg every 6 hours) but it settled within a few weeks and then I started to drop to twice a day unless I had a flare up. I'm hoping someone can give me some advice on how to cope with these horrible twitchy limbs and insomnia! I've never had much "get up and go" but with this happening every so often, it totally affects my days and I feel even less of a urge to get out of bed to do anything. I don't want to be in chronic pain but I don't want to have sleepless nights with this horrible twitching either, will I just have to put up with it in order to be as pain free as possible?

[Kalvin]

Take a look at a drug called Requip (Ropinirole)

It might help.