I use tramadol at night sometimes. I find 1/2 of a 50mg enough for me. I don't use it everyday. Often I have much less pain the next morning too.

It makes me sort of hallucinate somewhat...a weird kind of high, but when I fall asleep, I don't notice it. I only had the nausea twice in the beginning. I just can't take a whole one...seems the 1/2 helps my pain anyway.

Not all states in the US have tramadol on control status. Mine does not yet. It has abuse potential, but not equally for everyone.

I had a horrible reaction to tramadol many years ago, before I knew what it really was. Do you have medical marijuana where you live? I'd much rather use that then take more pills and addictive pills. I got addicted to Percocet a little over a year ago when dealing with a bad burn. I needed it then for the burn pain, but man, that was hard to deal with. I was not happy to be addicted after 10 days and it took 6 weeks to get over it with gradual decrease of meds.

And don't feel bad for having to take something for the pain. There is no point suffering when there are options available to make your life better.

I don't know, I guess people are different, but I have been taking several 7.5 mg percocets a day for years and when I developed a sensation of sunburn all over, several people on here, including Mrs. D., suggested that the opiates could be to blame. They do rarely cause allodynia, but usually at pretty high dosages. I just stopped taking them, and while my pain levels were higher and the burning seemed unabated, I had no withdrawl or addictive issues. After a trial of several weeks I went back on them as I function better with significant pain relief. I am not really concerned about dependency, I am dependent on Miralax for my quality of life as well as my opiates, but it was good to know I could quit if I needed to.

I hear you about the addiction problems, but obviously, having come off of alcohol and xanax, that was very much on my mind, and one of the reasons I didn't really want the medication in the first place.

I think you have to make a distinction between addiction and dependency though. Although people don't really get "addicted" to xanax (or other benzos), the withdrawl is just plain *horrible*, and took at least 3 months in my case. It's also possibly lethal if not supervised properly. So trust me when I say I never ever want to go through that again ever.

A couple of months before quitting alcohol/xanax, I had quit 100mg tramadol/day very quickly without any ill effects or much effort. Yes, there is a sort of "high" in the beginning, but it's absolutely not the kind of high that I feel good about.

For the same reason, although readily available here, marijuana doesn't do it for me. Not alone does it not seem to work on the pain (for me), I do not like the way it makes me feel. It would have been great, as growing my own plant wouldn't even really be a legal problem here (grey area), but I tried it and it just doesn't work. Also: I have seen people who did become hopelessly addicted to marijuana, and it is not a pretty sight. It doesn't happen often, but it's not uncommon either (the things you learn in rehab... )

I took the double dose to establish if it worked. If not, it would have been a good reason to quit immediately, and find something else. It did work however, and I'm now back to 1 pill (37,5mg tramadol/325mg paracetamol) every 6 hours. The nausea is going away (like before) although I wouldn't drive a car yet - still feel a bit too dozy.

As MrsD said, it seems to work longer than I thought (mornings), and that may be because I finally relax the muscles in my feet/toes. So weighing the good/bad, I think it's a good plan to keep taking it for a while.

And again, I'm not stopping the vit/supp. I'm convinced that they are the only thing that can help long term. This may be semantic, but I don't even consider it "alternative". In fact, I guess a lot of people without PN, especially over 50, would benefit from D3/B12/mag./DHA-EPA etc. My GP agrees, as the number of people she sees with very low D3 for example is stunning (her words).

As for cost, with an rx here it costs me $12 for 60 pills, so it's not breaking the bank either. So far so good.