Does Tramadol cause an addiction?
GCME (Global Cancer Meet and Expo) anticipates The treatment of the severe pain syndrome with opioid analgesics is complicated by the fact that most patients develop a fast medical addiction. Morphine, Codeine, Fentanyl, and other drugs are not recommended for the use more than 2 weeks. This rule is applied to all opioid medications. Tramadol is an opioid analgesic with a mixed mechanism of the action. It has a severe analgesic activity, gives a fast and long-term effect but it has a higher index of the pharmacological safety than Morphine. Tramadol is classified as “opioid non-narcotic analgesic” in some medical sources. It has a reasonable explanation: Tramadol is by 6 thousand times weaker than Morphine and by more than 10 times weaker than Codeine. So, the narcogenic index of Tramadol is lower than in these drugs. The treatment of the chronic pain on the basis of Tramadol is usually well tolerated by patients. At the same time, an addiction does not occur during the use of the therapeutic doses for more than 4 weeks. So we can say that Tramadol does not cause the addiction. But these characteristics are achieved only if recommendations are followed.
1. Correct dosing
2. The dose is not increased during the treatment
3. The dose frequency is not increased
4. A cessation is gradual
If these recommendations are followed, the patient’s life, sleeping, mood, and physical activity are improved from the first day. That is why Tramadol differs from more intensive opioids (morphine, buprenorphine) which causing a pain relieving effect lead to the inhibition of the physical and mental activity and other significant negative symptoms. However, if we consider the pharmacological characteristics of Tramadol in details, we cannot call this drug absolutely safe and harmless. There is clinical data confirming a high probability of the development of the abstinence syndrome during a sudden cessation of Tramadol use.
