Mora,
I wouldn't waste any more time with that old display. It drew 700mA because something was reverse polarity. It gave up the ghost after a few seconds.
And there's no guarantee that one or more of the I/O pins interfacing to the PIC at the time aren't compromised. If it was me I'd start over with a replacement PIC and correct display.
When I started this project I had a 40char x 4 line LCD in perfect working order I planned to use. I accidently connected it to the power supply with odd and even pins swapped. Vcc & ground became reversed. I had current limit on ps set to 300mA, which it hit immediately and I quickly shut it down.
I corrected and tried it again but it was dead to the world.
Good thing because it pushed me in the right direction- I re-evaluated my LCD display needs and decided on a 16 char large font LCD
-Chris