<br> back to carriage return

[admin]

I have a series of forms that insert info into a mysql database. In order to preserve carriage returns, I used $comments=nl2br($comments);

The problem is...There is a screen where you can update this information, and when you submit the new info, nl2br adds an extra <br> for every one that is already there.

I know space is supposed to be infinite, but this is ridiculous.

Any ideas?