Side effects - Tramadol Dangers! Please Read!

[ImStillAlive?]

Let me start by saying hello. Swim usually is just a browser of this site but due some experiences throughout this year,Swim feels obligated to post a warning to the dangers of Tramadol. Swim will try to sum it all up and make it as short as possible so here we go.

Story #1

Swim first started taking 50 mg Tramadol about a year and a half ago. When swim first started taking them, swim would take 4 50mg at a time and that would last about 3-4 hours real strong. Tramadol has a long half life so at times swim would only take that amount maybe 3 times a day and be okay from wake up to bedtime. During the time of taking tramadols, swim was mainly taking all of your other basic opiates. Tramadol was harder to come by so swim couldn't use those as much as swim was using all the other opiates. So to figure about an average it would prolly have been 75-100 Tramadols a month. Well this past March swim came got his usual 50 or so pills and one day swim also had an 8 ball of cocaine. Swim would dabble in and out of cocaine and heroin when opiates were not available. Knowing that the combination of cocaine and tramadol is what killed ODB, swim did it anyway. Usually when swim would do cocaine swim would use the opiates after it was all gone to ease the comedown. Well swim did the same thing this time but replacing the opiates with the tramadol. Once swim ran out swim took 4 tramadols about 15 minutes after the last bit of coke was gone. After doing that swim ran out side to take care of something on the yard and came back to the office 30 minutes after going out side. Swim walked in the office and asked the other person working if anyone had called and he said no and then swim turned to walk out of his office swim hit the floor and went into a seizure. Siezure didn't last but about a minute or two and was out for about 30 minutes. Went to hospital and stayed there for 12 hours only to hear the hospital say we don't know why you had a seizure. Swim figure that it was the mixture of drugs that caused it. But swim had done it a numerous of times before with along the same amount each time so it came across very unusual to swim. With that being said swim left the hospital and went on with swims night.

Story #2

After the first incident swim did take a lot more precaution when taking tramadol and making sure to not mix it with cocaine just in case that was the reason for the seizure. Well about 4 months later swim had just got off work around 830 am from doing a 16 hour shift and went home. Through out the night swim had taking 4 20mg adderalls within an 8 hour period starting at like 10pm the previous night. Around 430am swim took his last 2 adderalls in hopes that it would be enough for him to make it halfway through the day because swim had to meet his lawyer at 100pm. Well about 630 or 700ish swim started to come down off the adderall and decided to go ahead and take some tramadol to pick up where the addys would leave off. Swim took 6 this time. (Swims dosage had gone up from 4 to 6 at a time from the last incident due to swims body getting to comfortable with them.) Well swim left work at about 11am and went to the house to change and get something to eat before heading off the lawyers. At 12pm on the nose, swim took 6 more tramadols and headed out the door.Swim headed down his street and headed into a little subdivision that swim uses to cut through. Well the the next thing sees is paramedics standing over him while he is laying on the ground.There is ambulances and police and blah blah blah the whole nine yards everywhere and thats when swim looked over and saw the Xtreme Blazer that he was driving wrapped around a tree in the middle of someones from yard. Upon during on the street inside the subdivision, at some point swim blacked out or had another seizure and since the road was straight continued down until the road curved and went straight up into this front yard hitting a fire hydrant first and then hitting the tree. A female that lived at the house was actually getting her mail at the time and as soon as swim hit the tree,she ran over and drug swim out of the car because she thought that it was going to explode. Well to sum things up they obviously wanted to take me to the hospital but swim declined because upon thinking about it swim figured that it was once again the mixture. Being that adderall is an upper it was the only thing that made sense so that was the reason why swim didn't not go to the hospital because other than that swims body was fine. No marks or cuts of any sort. A little burn from the airbag but thats it.


Story #3 Conclusion

Well after the 2nd incident swim vowed never to mix extreme uppers with tramadol anymore. So pretty much from that point on out swim stayed strictly on tramadol. From that point until the beginning of September swims normal dosage was 6-8 tramadol at a time 4 times a day. So 24 -32 a day. Most of the time this was a daily thing unless swim couldn't get a hold of any from which he would have to wait a couple of days or so from which the dosage would change slightly to try and conserve. Well one night swim was at the house playing guitar and just sitting around being lazy till going to bed. That day was no different than any other day. Swim had only taken 16 that day because swim had woke up real late that afternoon. Swim took his last dose of 5 at around 11pm that night because usually swim wouldn't get into the bed until around 5 or 6 once swim got tired. It was about 4am and swim had been working and recording some music all night and morning trying to get most of it done before heading to sleep. Swim headed up stairs to get something to drink when swim wakes up on the couch with yup you guessed it paramedics standing over swim along with police and yada yada yada. Paramedics kept asking swim if swim had take anything from which he said no and swims dad is standing there telling them that it was cocaine over and over again. Swim kept trying to them and him that it wasn't. swim have a very open relationship about drugs with my parents so it was nothing for swim to tell the truth. The only reason why swim didn't say anything about the tramadols is because swim has had everybody believing him that swim was sober and not taking pills anymore. Swims means that swim didn't even consider tramadol a pill just because it wasn't a true opiate and the addictiveness was no where near as bad as standard opiates. Swim took them because swim liked them not because swim was addicted. When swim would go several days without,swims withdrawals were almost not even there. But after this last incident it had come to swims attention that this seizure was caused only by tramadol. No mixture what so ever. Nothing. So swim can only believe that the previous incidents were strictly just tramadol related and not the result of mixing. But after this last incident swim has cut off tramadol completely and is taking suboxone just to make things easier in getting back into normal life from which quitting the tramadols cold turkey was no where near as bad as going one day sober after an OC binge.

Swim is telling his story because after 3 seizures from which each time they all had something in common- tramadol. Swim is very thankful that the seizures didn't fuck anything up in his head and cause extensive damage. It took 3 but now swim has learned that tramadol is a very evil fucking drug when taken in amounts for recreational use. All swim wanted to get across was to be very careful when taking this. Swim was driving down the road and thank fucking god that it didn't turn out worse than it did. Just be careful if you do participate.

Sorry it was so long but swim just wanted the full effect of the story to be relevant so others could understand and get all the facts that were involved each time. Thank you for reading and hopefully something will be learned from this story.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Thanks for SWIM's personal input, stories like this are always appreciated even if the reulsts are not the greatest

[Zendo]

Hi man thanks alot for swiys story.
swim loves to take trammies every now and than however now swim only takes them with benzo's,
swim use to get evil twitches off trammies which swim beleived could be the onset of a seizure, the benzo'es really took the edge of the twitches,

but man reading swiys story, and what swiy was mixing trams with, swim new where the story was headed,
Swim is happy to hear no permament damage is done, and thanks again for sharing what swiy did.

[Solinari]

This is a guess but it might have something to do with serotonin, noradrenaline or dopamine, one, a combination of two, or all three. I say this because cocaine and adderall affect all 3 and tramadol affects serotonin and noradrenaline. As i said, i am just guessing here so i don't have any idea how it could cause seizures but i can't see the opioid action of tramadol being responsible.

[Mint boi]

Tramadol is well documented as having the ability to lower the seizure threshold. The daily dose should not exceed ~400mg. It would not surprise me if cocaine and adderall can lower the threshold too.

[G_nome]

Yeah, SWIM thought it was fairly well known that tramadol can cause seizures in high doses, especially at the amounts SWIImStillAlive? was taking. 24 to 32 in a day?! That's just asking for it.

[ImStillAlive?]

Originally Posted by G_nome

Yeah, SWIM thought it was fairly well known that tramadol can cause seizures in high doses, especially at the amounts SWIImStillAlive? was taking. 24 to 32 in a day?! That's just asking for it.

It sucked building up a tolerance to those fucking things. Its crazy because there were many times that swim exceeded the 32 a day mark or sometimes even taking up 10 at a time and the seizures occurred generally within the normal daily amount that swim was taking. Weird.

[NotImportant]

Swim used to take about 3 or 4 pills a day, got a real nice high. It was like getting real drunk. Like, blacking out almost. Waking up next morning not knowing for certain what swim did. It was cool. Anyway. When swim mixed it with other stuff, like sleeping pills or weed, Swim got this twitches in his whole left side. Weird really. Maybe it was the tramadol who did it.

reason swims not on it now: prescription ran out, and swims swiy is alert over pills going missing, so cant take from there anymore. But no more twitches after about a week without the tramadol.

[lorzapmail]

Tramadol seizures do happen. This pills are deadly in high does. Swim says don't start them. 3 pills become 6,9 12,20 and more. Tell your Doctor about your seizure possiblity. Get another pain med.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Thanks for SWIM's personal input, stories like this are always appreciated even if the reulsts are not the greatest. Gl...

[fiveleggedrat]

Swim used to get amazing opioid effects from tramadol, like that of heroin.

As long as Swimmers aren't on any other meds, especially ones that interact with serotonin (SSRI's, SNRIs, DXM, etc), tramadol can be a safe drug.

Dosages sshould remain under/at 300mg. When Swim starts taking more than 400mg per day, it's time to stop abusing this stuff and let tolerance go down. Don't use tramadol more than once or twice a week unless taking it medicinally.

Luckily Swimmers can get tolerance down just for taking a break, unlike Swim, who has permanent tolerance.

[Annasolveig]

wtf, swim had 200mg of tramadol, 2 hrs ago and feels nothing..

[yaba]

Swim ubused tramadol even when he was on venlafaxine (he knows an SNRI and tramadol can be dangerous, but was on a small dose of venlavaxine)

His girlfriend told him tramadol made him into a monster ! And when he stopt not a nice withdrawl, shacking, cold sweats, etc.. It took 2 weeks to feel normal again !
The first week was the worse, the second week lots better !

Swim took it in high doses (10x50mg at once them top up's a few hours later)

Oh swi-annaslveig it took usually 2+hrs for swims to kick in.
And for some reason it works better (stronger) then for others.

[ThusSpokeZarathustra]

Swim is curious how harmful 600mgs in one day would be? Say he took 6 50mg Ultram pills at 6:30 am, and is thinking of taking 6 more around 5 pm. He also took 6 the day before at around 5 pm.

[yaba]

Don't want to give bad advice but swim done lots more then that. Please wait for some more opinions from others !!

[LongStrangeTrip1983]

That is an EXTREMELY large amount of Tramadol for swim to be taking!!! Swim took 12 one day and thought swim was gonna die. Swim is very lucky that swim didn't die from all that. Swim did some trammies and coc tonight. Swim feels good and wants some more coc. All be careful out there with opiates of any sort. Peace

[TheSpeedBall32]

SWIM has got 20 odd of these (50mg) and would like to know the best way to get off on them, given SWIM smokes H daily aswell as popping around 100mg of benzo's, and a few cans of beer also.

Would SWIM be best to not bother with anything else, just purely the Tramadol, or what out of the afore mentioned substances are a good mix with Tram's? Also what doseage is SWIM looking at?

Help much appreciated, Thank You.

[Rottenfruit]

Get gabapentin instead !!! Swimmy says its much better then tramacrap and very easy to get doctors to write it.

[samuraigecko]

Amusing that though the last seizure did not have other drugs involved that the finger is still pointed to tramadol as the culprit.

As everyone knows . . SWIM is not at all a fan of tramadol and would normally be the last to defend it. But really . . . read the stories. One would more than likely consult a doctor and tell him the facts rather than just assume that tramadol was the culprit in this case.

It is quite obvious that coke and amphetamines have been abused extensively (this alone can cause seizures . . . the damage done can even cause ONGOING seizures).

- on another note, Heroin IS an opiate . . so when opiates arent available, SWIyour still having an opiate, lol -

Mixing these drugs is a known danger, once something in your body or mind is broken then it is not always repairable. If SWIyou broke something and this cause seizures then just an outside influence of a drug can have an adverse effect.

SWIM remembers when he first gave up coke from an extremely heavy addiction. Almost ANY drug introduced into his system during this time caused an extremely bad effect. A few even caused minor heart attacks, and one caused a minor TIA . . .AND THESE WERE DRUGS PRESCRIBED BY A DOCTOR FOR LEGITIMATE REASON.

Anyhoo . . . just a thought . .

[Froster]

Personally I find Tramadols good for a hangover or good to kill a few hours if you have nothing else to do.

I'd be very wary about mixing them with anything though. Cocaine & Trams is what killed ODB from the Wu-Tang Clan.

[Dreznik]

for Swizee ... Tram was garbage - Please read my previous Tram posts ....& ... as I fully understand everyswimz' reaction may differ (my 1st flexeril experience put me to sleep for 11hrs & my buddy felt no drowsiness) ..I threw them out. ALSO- with all the $$$ (and assuming people around ODB who knew what Tha-FKUC was going on why woood ODB even have them near him???) .. seriously ...

[LinusMundane]

Booo, SWIM posted reputation to the wrong post... Gonna check now and see if he cant give it out correctly.

[Lady Codone]

Tramadol is different than other opiates in that it has SSRI properties and builds up in the system much like any other SSRI would. It can lower seizure threshold and cause serotonin syndrome if taken in high doses or in regular doses with SSRIs and some drugs, especially in people prone to seizures (it's very possible not to know you're prone to them beforehand).

Stimulants in general have some pretty harsh effects on the brain and can cause psychosis, twitching, hallucinations, paranoia, violent outbursts, and possibly seizures in those with a predisposition to them. It's best not to mix them with other drugs because of their particularly ugly and unpredictable effects on not only the brain, but also the cardiovascular system. I've heard that mixing stimulants like Adderall with SSRIs like Prozac can cause serotonin syndrome, so taking uppers with Tramadol (which affects serotonin like an SSRI) could cause similar problems.

If you're going to take an opiate in high doses everyday, you're better off choosing a different one. While Tramadol is seen as one of the more "mild" opiates, it's also insidious in that it can cause addiction like regular opiates but with added danger of seizures and serotonin syndrome. That risk increases with prolonged use or increasing doses.

BE SAFE!