Chronic Pain
"I was prescribed tramadol by my pain management doctor along with gralise (extended release gabapentin) and epidural cortisone injections for pain from cervical and lumbar stenosis. I loved it at first - it enabled me to resume walking and sleeping through the night. But after 3 months I had upped the number of pills I was taking to the max 400mg/day because I was becoming tolerant to it. When I had to go off it due to surgery I decided to stay off it and experienced unpleasant withdrawal of sweats/chills and loss of appetite for about 4 days. Now I use a TENS device for pain at night (FDA recent approved a new device that can be worn at night) and am off tramadol. Tramadol was not a good long term solution for me."