Were you prescribed anything for pain before fentanyl? If so, what is different about fentanyl? What prompted the switch?
I do strongly believe GP's shouldn't be prescribing pain meds for prolonged periods. They should refer patients to pain specialised after six month or if the patient complains that medication isn't adequate as pain is a very complex subject.
Then I was refereed to pain clinic, I was prescribed Amitripyline (it's not a Opioid), which was used as an anti-depressant (~150mg), but in much lower dosages (~30mg) it works for nerve pain. One side effect (which is actually great for me) is that it does make you drowsy, so taking it in the evening greatly improves sleep.
I've also tried Hydrocodone (which I found very good), occasional Oxycodone for breakout-pain. I've found patches (initially Buprenorphine) to be much more beneficial as they provide stable relief and lesson waking in the middle of the night/ early morning as traditional pills wear off.
The biggest increase to my prescription was just over a year ago when I did some intensive physio to try and beat the CRPS (there's some good medical data to back this up), unfortunately it meant I need to for from 5mg of Buprenorphine to 20mg (the max dose) in the course of about three months. After I stopped the treatment the pain didn't really subside.
I switched to Fentanyl patches a few months ago as the Buprenorphine wasn't working. Initially for trial, but we decided to switch to them as there were very little side effects and these mean not needing anything for the breakout pain. The stronger meds seem to do very little for the day to day pain (pain becomes normal), but seem to be far more effective when the pain is bad.
Fentanyl is the first drug to scare me, the first thing I did when applying the patches was watch some of the material on Youtube (addiction & deaths) to give me a healthy respect for the drugs.