Insomnia might be an acceptable side effect, if only it cured the migranes. Yes, I am taking beta-blockers - for me there are no noticeable side effects, and I while it would be better to stop migranes without drugs, its far better to use drugs than to have migranes, unless the side effects are really bad.
The psychedelics look promising, I'll have to keep an eye on that. But they're illegal in the UK for any purposes. I'd definitely keep the dose sub-psychedelic.
A quick search indicates that the 'legal highs' have now been made illegal, so that isn't a loophole. BTW, where about in the UK are you from?
TMS also looks promising, so I'm definitely going to ask my doctor about that. I'll also try and get one of the home use ones, if its not too expensive.
I think there are places that do TMS in Bath and London. Its £500 for a prescription TMS hat last time I looked.
By the way, have you found anything particularly effective beyond the usual recommendations?
Beta blockers work well enough for me. I havn't tried diet or TMS, and most of the other drugs didn't work, and/or had really bad side effects.
I'm from london, so I might check out some places near here, if that's cheaper. And yeah, insomnia would be acceptable if it got rid of the migraines, but no such luck. What were the side effects, by the way?
So, I read a post a little while ago saying that asking the community for advice on personal problems was okay, and no one seemed to disagree strongly with this. Therefore, I'll just ask for some advice, and hope that I'm not accidentally going past some line. If I do, I apologise
I have had migraines for quite a while now. They started when I was a child, but were infrequent in those days. They got progressively worse as time went on, and things started to get quite bad when I was about 12. A few years down the line, I would have headaches for months at a time, with migraines popping up for a few days a month. It got worse from there. Now, I have had migraine-like symptoms for 10 months now. I say migraine-like because part of the definition of a migraine is that it lasts from about 3 hours to a few days. According to a neurologist I recently went to, I have transformative migraines, or wording similar to that. So I have all the symptoms of migraines, except they last for inordinate amounts of time. I've had an MRI, and it showed nothing wrong with my brain. According to the World Health Organisation, this is more disabling than blindness, and as bad as acute psychosis: http://www.migrainetrust.org/chronic-migraine You can see why its rather important to me that I get rid of/deal with this.
Now, I've tried quite a lot of things over the years, especially in the last two or so. NSAIDs do very little, and thing like migraleve (paracetamol with codeine) are a little better. Sumatriptan provides some relief, but it doesn't get rid of the migraine. At best it will knock me down to a weak migraine. I've tried taking propanalol (160mg) for half a year, and it does little to help. I was prescribd Amitiptyline (10mg) a week ago, but it hasn't had much effect. I was told to increase by 10mg it every two weeks until I hit 30mg. I've also tried cutting things out like chocolates, and dairy for a month. It didn't have any effect. I also don't have any caffeine. So this eliminates some common causes of migraines. My migraines sometimes respond to heat/cold applied to my head, but this is only some of the time, due to my migraines shifting in nature. Further, it only takes the edge of them. I've also tried taking magnesium supplements, but they had a negative effect on me i.e. strange dreams and insomnia. That just made my problems worse. Also, I've ruled out medication overuse.
So, does anyone have any recommendations? There should be a few people who have had experience with this level of migraines, and I expect they might be able to provide some advice. I'm not too optimistic, but I really need something that works.