Sick of being sick

I hate the drugs; they make me sick to my stomach! I stopped taking some of them during the day because I’d rather tolerate the pain than feeling nauseous. I still have to take my pain medication (Hydrocodone or Vicodin, Lorcet, Lortab, Norco) every 4 hours especially now that I’m doing physical therapy but I really can’t stand the upset stomach and headache. It’s frustrating because I want to get back to my normal daily activities but it’s difficult because I can’t focus and concentrate. A while ago I started taking the muscle relaxant and the pill for the sciatic nerve (Methocarbamol or Robaxin, and Gabapentin or Neurontin) at night only. I still need them when I sleep because my back and sciatic seem to hurt when I lay down and that my muscles are at rest, although I only rarely have mini spasms any more. I tried to do some research on Hydrocodone and nausea, and all I could find was that it’s pretty much inevitable. My founding said to drink 6-8 glasses or more of water a day to avoid constipation and to make sure to eat when taking the pill but also not eat too much. If I get nauseous it may also mean that the dose could be too big for what I can tolerate. So the only way out that I can see is to try lowering my dose again, which will eventually happen anyway. I have no problem with that since the longer I take these drugs, the higher the risks for long term side effects are. I would say that medication has been one of my biggest challenges of surgery and I welcome any advice that anyone may have on that topic.