Is it true sciatica (i.e. radiating pain down legs)? I hurt my back on DL and spent 6 months getting back on track. I'll give you my tail of woe and redemption below. But, disclaimer, I never had sciatica, all my pain was mid/lower back, hip and occasionally groin. That was probably important.
Lived 35 proud years without an ounce of back pain, never thought I'd be that guy
Foolishly did 80+% of my previous 1RM on DL, woke up next morning with terrible back pain
After 3 months waiting for it to get better with rest went to GP. GP wiggled me around and determine I didn't have any obvious nerve or disc damage, referred me to PT
PT gave me a bunch of flack about my sitting at work and possible anterior pelvic tilt and other things. I obeyed it all religiously and it got a bit better, but only if I studiously avoided ANY back workouts, even bending over and picking up my kids. I was living like an old person.
I "graduated from PT" by touching my toes and various other things, which was a lukewarm victory since I'm pretty sure 6 weeks earlier I could have also done those things.
Someone posted here about Trigger Point Therapy. I almost ignored it, since I'm a pretty skeptical guy (don't get me started on the chiropractor lunatic I tried when I hurt my neck) and there was no good scientific evidance of its efficacy. I finally said "What the hell, it's <$20" and bought it.
Less than 2 weeks later I found a sore spot in my lower back and massaged it to the point of bruising, ignoring the pain. 1 week after that I was virtually without pain, and when it did bother me I just found that spot and massaged the hell out of it again with this
The only other "I'm old and this sucks" issue that plagued me was a sore neck that had bothered me for over 18 months. I managed to find a similar spot on my shoulder blade and massaged the crap out of it and it's basically fine now too (again, it may hurt, but I just hit that spot when it does)
I'm quite loathe to give the "This magically worked for me" but it really did in this case. I've always been the type of person that was happy to endure constructive pain, but also, as I got older, wary of destructive pain and the tendency to be tough and hurt yourself worse. The main value of the book was to say "If there are sore spots in your soft tissue, it's ok to beat the crap out of them and they'll probably feel better, and maybe even make other things feel better too".