It got worse for me before it got better. Before going paleo, I had to take a zantac every night, and I did notice that the more I took the stuff, the more I was training my stomach to produce extra acid at a specific time.
I know this because I stopped having dinner since it was such torture to have it climb back up my neck and choke me - so on nights when I forgot to take the zantac, but ate absolutely nothing, it got worse at exactly the time I usually took the zantac!
So I started to take half a pill, then a quarter pill, and so on by chopping them up with a knife. I also stupidly found that eating hard cheeses would counteract the acid - it did, but I actually had a slightly different issue. If I ate nothing at all for dinner, I'd also get a squirt of bile build up in my stomach, and I'd get bile reflux - see, about 10 years before, I had my gall bladder out. (This seems to be a classic issue with wheat, if you go low fat for a while, then reintroduce fat, you cause gall stones, and in this modern age of surgery, the doctors are intent on removing things a lot more than they are fixing them.) So the cheese was actually counteracting the bile as well since it contains fat.
Another trick I learned is to take a bit of olive oil before eating foods that would get stuck. The worse stuff is usually turkey - tends to get stuck in my throat because it's dry. Sometimes certain vitamins would get stuck, especially if I took them with green tea instead of
However, once I went paleo, the reflux got much worse, this is because once the leaky gut caused by grains and legumes was healed, I started to absorb more zinc, potassium, magnesium, etc. all of which are needed to create stomach acid.
Like you, I asked desperately, but on Robb Wolf's forum instead, and Squachy mentioned that that I should take digestive enzymes which contain bile and betaine HCL, and that I should try to eliminate dairy. At first I was resistant to eliminating dairy, because I was using cheese to counteract the acid/bile, but in about a week, all the reflux went away.
The digestive enzymes (Now Super enzymes is what I used), had another effect - I started to get normal stools now instead of things that looked like clusters of grapes. And since they contain some Betaine HCL, they helped restore stomach acid as well, so I started to digest proteins better.
The protocol with digestive enzymes is to take one pill at a time on an empty stomach than put your hand on top of your stomach right below your solar plexus and feel for heat. Once you feel heat with X numbers of pills, that's the dose to take. If you don't feel heat and you've taken 5 of them, don't take any more. Make sure to eat something immediately after this or you might get reflux. Whenever you take these pills, you should have a meal containing both proteins and fats.
Feeling much better, about a month later, I got brave and tried to eat some cheese in the morning, and WHAM! Acid reflux that night. I stopped again for a while and tried it again a few weeks later, and it came back once more. Experimented some more and found out that almost any cow dairy produces it, whether fermented or not - but goat's milk doesn't. So I'm fairly sure that for me, it's the casein, or something else in cow's milk (since cheeses and yogurts have the lactose eaten by bacteria.)
So for now I'd take a very close look at the diet, you might not fix it immediately, and it will take time to heal your esophagus, but things like dairy must go. You might have a reaction to some other food you're eating every day, so rotate it out for a week and see if there's any improvement. Some people have issues with nightshades (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, etc.)
Try to avoid foods that tend to get stuck, or swallow a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil before eating them, and maybe even during, and chew very well. The oil won't do much to heal your esophagus, but it will help coat it so the food won't get stuck as easily. Plus it's a good source of healthy fat. You can also try butter, or better yet ghee as ghee doesn't have milk solids (incase you've got issues with dairy - I can do ghee without issue).
Taking some supplements may help as well: potassium, zinc, and especially magnesium. Possibly some iodine (eating kelp or seafood is better.) In terms of potassium, pills are a waste, they give you very little as for some reason each is only 99mg, where a coconut water has 6x more. Bananas have some, but they're very high in sugar and since I tend to go VLC, I avoid them. I usually cycle between ZMA and magnesium malate.
ZMA is another interesting thing, it can raise your Testosterone levels, while it provides zinc and magnesium, but it can cause weird vivid dreams as well, so maybe stay away from it for now since the reflux is keeping you awake.
Going low carb may help as well, I remember a podcast mentioning that if you've got SIBO, eating carbs can cause gas in the small intestine which may go back up through the stomach and cause acid to go up. Not sure on this point.
After eliminating dairy, all of a sudden I had issues with eggs, especially the whites, it was like I couldn't digest them, and they'd sit in my stomach like a rock, but a few weeks later, that went away, probably as the levels of stomach acid adjusted it got better. But some people actually have issues with eggs. I don't, it was a temporary thing. Try avoiding them for a while and see if they make any difference, then reintroduce them and see if you get a problem, etc.
Obviously avoid all grains and legumes - leaky gut can take a month or so to cure, and any exposure to grains will reverse that. But once that part is healed, you'll be better able to absorb minerals that affect stomach acid.
So stick to meats and veggies that you can tolerate for a while and find out what works for you. It's a rough ride, I know, I was there too, but you have a good chance to get through it.
Depending on how bad the damage is, you may have to get surgery to remove the scar tissue and repair the LES, but give this a try too.
