I was eventually up to ~12 vicodins per day due to abusing them and just being miserable.

Wow. That's intense. Sorry you had to go through that, Blake. I have a lot of confidence in the PT I'm working with now, but I think we may have been trying to address to many issues at once and my body's just kind of freaking out about it. I was also starting to get pain down my leg which was the original reason I started doing the PT (all the back issues I've had prior to that never involved the sciatica). I don't think there's a herniation, or if there was, the PT would have picked up on it. Much of what we've been doing has seemed to help quite a bit. Microdiscectomies sounds interesting. If it comes to surgery, it'll definitely be something I keep in mind. Thanks!