Comment by veb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by veb | Hacker News Reader

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Just a warning, Tramadol reacts very badly in some people. Like myself, just a single pill will cause me to have tonic-clonic seizures leading up to a grand-mal seizure later on in the day.

Tramadol also has a bunch of shit in it, I feel like it's a 'dirty' drug. For example, it's very closely related to the chemical structures of antidepressants. This can be helpful, but not when you need to stop it. You also can't really take any serotonergic medicine either as you'd be at a very high risk of serotonin syndrome. Nobody wants that.

Honestly, old and true medicines really do work. I'm not saying the Sacklers are awesome, they're fuckin'evil and didn't value human lives - but the drug works for those who need it.

And Cannabis is not legal in New Zealand, at least yet. We'll find out on the 30th if it's going to be...

(I have to be on it after burning my entire left arm, and chest with burning hot oil - I also educate myself on medicines as I used to work in said sector, and I do have seizures and Tramadol is well known to lower the seizure threshold very very fast)

I wish I had known about the serotonin part earlier; I destroyed my back today on the dumbest thing and took one so I could get some work done. I wasn't taking an SSRI when I used tramadol more frequently, but I am now, and I probably wouldn't have had I known.

Sigh. I really don't know what to do in these scenarios, it's nothing but bad choices :(

Best thing anyone can do is to familiarise themselves with what they take, and what the key indications are with mixing medication and what happens when you stop. In NZ we have medsafe (https://www.medsafe.govt.nz/), a govt website that lists everything they give out. There's also the The New Zealand Formulary (http://nzformulary.org/)

An example here is that too many doctors believe that Pregabalin has no withdrawals. They're very wrong. Here, they will prescribe it for anything. It works really well too, but there's a lot of hidden bullshit. As an example, they give it to people with epilepsy, but one of the main contradictions is that it can actually cause seizures. So when that started happening for me, they put me on clonazepam (2mg, six times a day).

When I burned myself, I told the hospital I did not want either medicine. There's no point in taking Pregabalin if I have to take so much clonazepam to fix the side effects.

A week later (while still in hospital) I had a panicked pharmacist for the ward visit me and he's like "omg we weren't giving you these two" and I said, "nah mate, it's fine. I feel okay apart from the pain" and he's like, "hang on, you just stopped 12mg of clonazepam a day and you feel fine?" and so I said yes, it's because it simply stopped working and my body has decided it doesn't work on me anymore, which is why I can't take the Pregabalin either... and the stupid thing is the Pregabalin is probably one of the best things I could take right now due to it's amazing nerve pain relief. I'd rather not have seizures though, nor have to find the right kind of benzo to help. I doubt I'd find one that's different enough from the rest to help.

As someone who takes tramadol daily, and has done for about 7 years, I respect that it isn't the best option. But right now I don't have better alternatives. Yes, I've taken breaks for up to a month (without needing to ween, never upped my dosage).

Cannabis doesn't work. Paracetamol/acetaminophen, ibuprofen, NSAID's don't work.

Morphine, codeine and tramadol do. Tramadol is the best of a bad bunch.

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