Hello everyone!

My name is Andre, I'm 39 and am diagnosed with Chronic CH.
Currently, I am on Verapamil, Depakote and Imitrex SubQ injections for an attack.

My clusters almost always come on during sleep, usually around 2am.  I get intense sharp pain behind my right eye, stuffy right nostril and the pain (more recently) extends to the back of my head/neck area on the right side as well.

Prior to seeing a neurologist who is a headache specialist I was having multiple attacks per week sometimes daily.  For me, the pain doesn't subside and would reach about a level 8 with nausea and light sensitivity almost daily to every other day.  Now, I average 1 per month and I rarely if ever have to use aleve or advil to take out the onset during other weeks. 

I have found alcohol to be a MAJOR trigger.  Just the other day I attempted 1 bud light and didn't get past 1 sip before I had a slight twinge of onset feelings and dumped the beer.  Was not worth it at all.

I would love to go completely headache free, but that hasn't happened for me since I was about 21.

At the moment I am tapering off of the Verapamil as my doctor doesn't like having someone on it all that long I guess (It has been 2 years.) and since the Depakote was added is when I saw the most significant improvement, which means it's the more effective of the two for me.  I take 500mg 2x day of Depakote.  I use about 1 injection of Imitrex per month at this point as well.  I am also on a 50mg/day dose of Zoloft. 

Coming off the Verapamil has me getting spells of feeling light headed as I am on a 120mg/day dosage down from 240 which was as high as 360mg about 3-4 months ago. Is this pretty par for the course (light headedness)?

Other triggers (usually need a combo):  air pressure changes, humidity changes, lack of hydration, lack of sleep, stress

I was on O2 therapy for a while.  It had absolutely zero affect on my CHs.  It had a non-rebreather and flow was 12-15mL for up to 20 minutes.  I was bummed.  I was hopeful that I could reduce or get off the meds.

Oh well, today I went back to 240mg Verapamil because I was getting shadows daily.  Can't have that happening again, so I'm going to try 240/120 alternating days as I did when I went from 360mg to 240.  First though, I plan on staying at 240 for a couple days. 

I'll check my inbox now...Thank you in advance.

Thank you for the information!  I probably should have been more specific about my medications...

I have been on Verapamil for about a year, year and a half and Depakote for about 8-10 months.

We began at 240mg Verapamil daily.  No real help.
Increased to 360mg daily.  Only a little improvement.
Depakote 500mg 2x daily.  Chronic CHs reduced to 1x month.

The Depakote was added only after the 12-15L O2 did not work.  On my own, prior to finding this site, I tried up to 20L 02 and it still had no effect. 

I am absolutely Vitamin D deficient and was put on a supplement plan of 2000iu/day.  I am not as good with it as I need to be and in reading information on this site it seems I should be taking way more Vitamin D than I was prescribed by my PCP.