Today I have read an article and watched a report on how the prescription painkiller Tramadol ‘claiming more lives
than any other drug’. You can have a look at this yourself: http://www.itv.com/news/utv/update/2016-10-06/prescription-painkiller-claiming-more-lives-than-any-other-drug/.
It’s no secret that I’ve been on this painkiller on and off for 3 years but for
the past year have increased to every day or every other day to manage the pain
that comes along with my health conditions.
First of I’d like to point out what tramadol does for me.
Tramadol is a strong, opiate based drug, and it’s the only medication that I have
taken to date that has had any effect on the amount of all over body pain I experience.
Over the counter drugs such as paracetomol or ibuprofen don’t touch my pain in
the slightest, I may as well have not taken any in the first place when it
comes to them. I’ve tried psychical therapies, herbal remedies, physio… you
name it, and nothing keeps my pain bearable on the day to day. The methods I have
tried can help and have longer term benefits, but what am I supposed to do when
all of my symptoms flare up ? What about when the weather changes effects my
body and I have lectures or work to go to? Yes I can push through in agony, but
when there’s a medication there that makes my day more bearable then I’m going
to use it.
The drug (tramadol) is difficult to get hold of. Doctors are
very hesitant to prescribe it, especially over a long period of time. I have
had trouble getting my prescriptions due to doctors concerned about the
addictive properties of tramadol and other health related risks that come along
side taking it. I am assessed a couple times a year, so far, as to what my usage
is like and whether or not it’s a viable option for me to keep receiving these prescriptions.
I take my painkillers ‘as and when’. This means a month prescription can
potentially last me 3 months. I understand the risks associated with the drug
and frankly, I’m not too keen on the drowsy side effects so I literally ONLY
take this medication when it’s absolutely necessary. The fact it’s difficult to
get hold of a prescription is not great for me personally because I do rely on
it for pain management but I also see why it is and should be difficult for the
public to get their hands on. The drug is strong. It’s dangerous when misused
and it’s highly addictive. It shouldn’t be taken lightly.
But going back to the article. It’s pissed me off. The kind of
people the article are talking about have pissed me off. A lot of things have
pissed me off. People are dying, fair enough. But they’re not dying because of
tramadol, they are dying because of the misuse of a strong medication. On the
video, the father clearly states ‘My son died from taking a cocktail of drugs
that included tramadol’. A cocktail of drugs of any kind isn’t going to be
great for you is it?! It was the mixture and amount of drugs that killed him,
not the one prescription drug alone. Further on in the article, it states that
people ‘take the drug by the handful around here’- again, misuse. Of course
people are going to die if they take an overdose of a drug. Not to even mention
taking drugs with other substances. Tramadol reacts with alcohol, tramadol
reacts with other medications – why is that hard to grasp. If you don’t want something
to go wrong when doing these kind of things, then don’t be an idiot. Why you
would ever use prescription pain medication for a ‘high’ in the first is beyond
me, especially with the shit side effects that come with it.
Pain management all over the world is difficult enough without
trying to convince professional bodies that we should make it harder to obtain
the drugs and methods of coping we sufferers need to live. Using scare tactics
(that’s what I believe them to be) of news titles and articles about ‘pain
relief kills more people’ is only going to make the people who rely on these
medications suffer more. How about we look into the actual cause of the problem
which is overdose and mixing drugs rather than pinpoint the one medication that
a lot of people with chronic pain use as treatment. Tramadol its self is not
the problem, yes it’s an incredibly strong prescription medication, but when
taken correctly with the right monitoring, I don’t see the problem. Drug misuse
of any kind is potentially lethal.
