Author: Thegreatestislove
Posted: Sat May 18, 2013 4:59 am
Hello youcandoit , welcome to the forum. I have been around this site for a long while now but I did not decide to start posting until recently. I just read what others had written and experienced up until a few days ago. I decided it was time to chime in lol.
I am so proud of you for realizing your addicton and having enough common sense to know what your body was telling you. A lot of addicts remain in denial for much longer than you did. I am also happy to hear that the suboxone is working so well for you. For some people switching from ultram or tramadol over to sub therapy can be tricky, so you are very lucky you have not encountered any issues with the change-over. Other than your brief withdrawl phase of course.
Some people have issues because tramadol has a lot of the same properties as the ssri drugs or anti-depressant drugs. I don’t know if you were aware of this or not. For many suboxone seems like agony for a while if the addict decides to stick with it after stopping tramadol or ultram. They go through a period of withdrawals that has nothing to do with opiates, but rather withdrawals a person would encounter if they had become dependant on an anti-depressant and then stopped taking it. I am happy to know that this did not happen to you. If for whatever reason you DO start to feel some effects that are not pleasant just know that is is most likely the ssri qualities of the tramadol leaving your body and that if you stick with the subs the bad feelings will eventually stop.
To answer the question of JohnB007- YES Tramadol is considered an opiate medication and although if it is taken properly it is rarely addictive, most people find as with all opiates tolerance occurs and then the increase in usage is soon to follow. Once a large doseage is taken over a period of time Tramadol and ultram can become just as addictive as any other opiate mediction. Personally I believe tramadol and ultram are garbage drugs brought to the pain management industry as a way to force patients in chronic pain to use it as an alternative to the more highly addictive drugs like codiene, and oxycodone. They wanted to prove a point that they could formulate a medication that is totally man made and has anti-depressant properties to try to prove themselves right that anti-depressants do help people manage chronic pain issues. I cannot count the times I had doctors try to prescribe me anti-depressants instead of pain meds for my chronic pain condition. They would either try to prescribe them along with a few pain pills or just offer me the anti-depressant alone with the promise that anti-depressants help pain and would help my condition within a couple of weeks of taking the meds. I always had to decline their offers though as I had already tried taking almost every single anti-depressant on the market and none of them helped me with anything except for making me feel worse. Not to mention it pissed me off that they would rather shove anti-depressants at me and LIE stating each time "This is a better option because they are not addictive" BOLOGNA. I am aware that for some the benefits of taking anti-depressants DO help them manage their pain, and that is GREAT for THEM, but I also know plenty of people who are addicted to anti-depressants, desperately want off of them but face horrid withdrawals if they dare stop taking them. Even after tapering a long term user of anti-depressants to AID them in discontinuation of the medication they still present to ER’s in terror or spend endless night laying awake without any hope to get some sleep. They lose their appetite, become extremely suicidal and it takes six months at best for them to start feeling any type of normal again. Then they usually face another challenge something like OCD that can last for well over a year. My point is that tramadol is addictive and possibly even worse than your more potent pain drugs. Not only is it addictive but it has the potential to cause all the side effects I described at discontinuation. Thats why I say it is a terrible drug and I honestly believe within the next fifteen to twenty years we will start hearing ads for companies who make this crap getting law suits much like the trashy drug Darvocet. It’s funny I had that drug pushed on me too by several doctors. I was even prscribed Darvocet for restless legs syndrome while I was pregnant. It did help the restless legs, but it also caused my kidneys to fail and I almost died in the Hospital after giving birth to my youngest son because of this junk. These junky synthetic drugs literally make me angry for other patients to this day. Sorry for rambling, but I believe someone needed to address this.
Oh yeah, and I also know the difference between dependance and addiction before anyone tries to correct me. The people I speak of on anti-depressant drugs ARE addicted to them, Not simply dependant.
Now back to YouCANDOIT, you sure CAN! I am proud of you and I hope you feel a great sense of accomplishment for getting out there and finding yourself some help for your addiction. You hit the nail on the head when you stated you noticed a horrible pain in your stomach that was not there in the morning before the opiates but suddenly every morning the pain was intensified. You were exactly right to blame withdrawals because that is exactly what was happening to you. It would be great if everyone listened to their bodies the way you obviously do. I am so glad you reached out and found help for your addiction but I also want you to know that suboxone is not a cake walk for everybody. Not everyone has an easy time getting stabalized on sub and some people have negative reactions to the suboxone. Then if you are planning to eventually taper and discontinue suboxone, Well that is a whole other discussion. Good luck to you and I hope everything keeps looking up for you in your recovery.