Posted by med_empowered on July 16, 2005, at 3:29:57
In reply to Re: elavil and tramadol, posted by Jakeman on July 15, 2005, at 23:54:14
hey! From what I understand, Tramadol is still an unscheduled med. There have been some cases of abuse, but the med has been pretty well studied; right after it was marketed as Ultram, the company that made it formed a special unit specifically to study an reports of addiction, withdrawal, overdose, etc. Early on, there were some reports of addiction/withdrawal, but that kind of died down; it seems that, for the VAST majority of Ultram users, "addiction" (long-term use characterized by contantly escalating dosages and undesirable activity to obtain the drug--doctor shopping, prescription forgery, black market purchase of tramadol, etc.) isn't a problem, even when its used on a regular basis. And...think about it: Ultram/Ultracet (tramadol+acetaminophen) remains unscheduled; commonly used psychiatric drugs such as benzodiazepenes (schedule IV), stimulants (most schedule II) and the like have a demonstrated history of causing addiction and abuse in some people. If Ultram were terribly addictive, the FDA would have rescheduled it already, especially after it went generic (at that point, the patent-company would have given up all resistance to re-scheduling, since they had a diminished interest in the drug financially).
poster:med_empowered
thread:528008
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050713/msgs/528443.html