Pain prolonged by opioids?

I’m in my 5th year of CIDP. I have terrible pain that I can’t shake. I take gabapentin, amitryptelene, and oxys. My oxy dose is 120 mg a day, with an extra 40 per month. This is about 1/3 of what I was taking 3-5 years ago, when I had lightning bolt pain. Now I feel like I am waist deep in cool water with a light electrical current passing through my body. My feet burn a lot more than they used to.

My family care doc subscribes to the belief that the oxy is causing my pain. He thinks when I get off these, then my pain will be gone. 3 years ago, I quit the oxys cold turkey. At the end of the week, my pain was still there, so I asked the doc for another prescription, but at a smaller dose. We have been working very hard to keep the dosages low, but the pain is killing me.

Yesterday, 5 hours after taking 120 mg, I was in such pain that I took an extra 40 mg (by my calculations, I can take this extra pill every three days, an economy of pain that I am sure too many people here recognize). Two hours later, the pain was very bad. I teach in a university and had an important meeting in the afternoon, a tenure case that I absolutely had to be there for. I also had two hour-long meetings with grad students. I decided that I either had to cancel these meetings, which would have severe consequences for me, or take a 5th oxy of the day. I emailed my doc about this, so that he would know why it is that I have trouble making a month supply last a month. He responded saying that the pain will subside when I lower the oxys.

Whenever I lower the dosage of these, the pain gets worse. I have read some summaries of the research that suggests that lowering narcos also lowers pain, but it does not seem true across the board. What do I need to do to show my doc that the pain gets worse at lower dosages? I am willing to go cold turkey again, but how long would I have to suffer the pain before he sees that getting off the oxys does not stop the pain? A week, two weeks? I am more than willing to suffer through that so that he understands what is actually going on with my pain.

Has anyone been through this? I am already not performing my job at the same level I was before the attack. If this keeps up, I worry that my colleagues will expect me to go on disability, which is the last thing I want to do. I’m 58 years old.