to try to "go off" of sinemet once you are on it, even for a short time, see "Neuromalignant syndrome" in a web search. Many of us who have been "just fed up with it all, have tried to go off their medications, and found themselves in the emergecy rooom at their local hospital.
Remember, any answer that you get on this forun is only the personal opinions of one person,it cannot be stressed any more that we as PWP are all so very, very different in the way PD affects each of us. The "red spiderveins" called "livedo reticularis", which usuallly occur around the ankles form taking amantadine are not to thought of as a "blood clot risk". In my case, they just up and dissappeared one day, not too long ago. The other drug related bad symptom that I can attribute to Amantadine is blurred vision. For me, it has stabilised , and I can still drive without glasses.
There are many here who will say that amantadine is just "not for them", and others who say that they "just don't do as well without it". WE KNOW how our bodies feel, they are our bodies, and nobody can tell you otherwise. If you do badly on one drug who was suggested by a good friend who is doing great on it, don't continue taking it if your body tells you "i don't like this stuff". Sometimes though, one has to try a bit harder and will find that, maybe they were taking too much too fast, and when they try to go back on a particular drug, slowly and in small doses, it seems like a totally diffferent experience. It's a long strange journey, but there is an "optimum" cocktail of anti-PD drugs for each one of us. It just takes a long time and a lot of trial and error.