The luxury of sleep and thinking you’ve cracked it but then…!

I recall the distant memories of restorative, refreshing sleep from about 5 years ago before RLS returned with vengeance. Out of the blue, this debilitating, miserable condition knocked me off work for a week whilst I spent nights googling why the creeping, crawling, deep ache resonated through my arms and legs. It must have been over 40 years since first experiencing sporadic restlessness as a child. I’ve tried all the usual BNF goto’s by my GP whilst avoiding the dopamine agonists in fear of the horror stories I’ve read about augmentation. Codeine seemed to help but after 3 years intermittent use, it lost the sleepy analgesic effectiveness. I fear that eventually, our bodies adjust to any drug and it just seems like temporarily numbing the symptoms without addressing the cause and adopting other potential side effects.
Oooh I’ve found a fix!! The number of times I thought I’d cracked it, keeping a food diary and linking episodes with to nutrition! Pizzas or bread seemed to cause flair ups and roasted veg with lots of herbs seemed to help. But this discovery soon lost continuity and the hopelessness returns.
Finding the balance! Maintaining just the right level of exercise along with creatine supplements seemed to really help, but not for long. Just when you think things are starting to work, it feels like someone is glaring from an ethereal plane of existence with torture implements. Particularly bad episodes this last week with horrible jolts and aches, feeling crap at night and wiped out during the day. How long can this continue before affecting other organs when restorative sleep is so important for our mind and body?
Unconventional alternatives! It gets to the point of trying anything so paid privately for medicinal cannabis tinctures but probably needed stronger dose and more cash! Vaping the dry herb at around 193c before bed helped zone me out but only for a couple of hours.
So what next? I continue to take multivitamins every morning even though I have a healthy diet. Take the iron with orange juice before bed (alternate days due to side effects!) and try to maintain some exercise when not completely wiped out. Abdominal breathing at night helps calm and focus my mind but the memories of restful sleep and hearing my wife nod off after 10mins just rubs salt into the wound so I spend more time having dog cuddles, getting night time munchies, wandering around the house and googling whilst others enjoy a nice cosy sleep… My heart goes out to everyone suffering this horrible condition in hope that a cure is one day possible and that other non sufferers understand when someone mentions that they suffer from RLS.