There's very little that's as pleasurable as 150mg of Tramadol on a cool tropical evening with nothing to do, nowhere to be, nobody to see -- a dose that's just enough to dissolve into its paradoxically flat & forgiving bloom. The hug that nothing else can give.

I have an addict's mind --

And so it was for five years, twice a day -- upon waking, and before supper -- I ate my Tramadol with a religious devotion.

I knew every pharmacy in the city that sold it OTC, their prices, and availability. Often, I preferred to buy from a shop in the heart of town from an older Sino-Thai lady -- whose chubby Corgi named Bubble would lay there languid and disinterested in the shop's customers, a Thai soap opera blaring on the TV next to him -- as she never questioned why I ate the pills. Further, she always kept them in stock: 100 baht (about $3USD) for a blister pack of ten pills, 50mg each or 500mg total. That would last me a day and a half, so I'd buy a week's worth at a time -- five packs. If I didn't come around for longer than a month, the owner would comment that she wondered if I'd gone back home. A warm, personal touch that earned my loyalty.

I could get them for half the price at two other shops, but one was often sold out and a hassle to get to because of traffic, and the other kept them in stock but the pharmacist -- middle-aged, attractive, well-groomed -- would pass them to me silently over the counter, in a way that made me feel dirty in forcing her hand to sell them to me. If I went to her shop in the evening, her son would be in the back room doing homework or playing on the phone. She sold the pills so easily because of him, as other pharmacists with her demeanor would ask for an ID, or only sell two packs at a time, or not carry Tramadol at all.

I can remember the exact day I became addicted to Tramadol and the reason why I continued. I was going on a long trip by bus and wanted to sleep, so I brought some along and ate 100mg. The dose relaxed me and when I returned home I took it again -- this time with the added benefit of lasting longer in bed. Much longer, in fact, to the point that I would call Tramadol a performance enhancing drug. I didn't know it at the time, but this is a well-known off label use for the stuff and I would lie if I said that it wasn't a secondary benefit -- with one lover remarking, after a long session, that "you are my drug".

But this isn't why I ate Tramadol. In fact, love and passion and all the ups and downs in life -- fears, regrets, even happiness and laughter -- were all nulled in Tramadol's embrace, erased and shelved in some forgotten corner of the mind. This is why I became an addict. I have always been too sensitive for my own good and the opioid released me from enduring the unrelenting lashes of this world on my tender psyche.

Some opiate addicts look down on Tramadol, saying that it didn't do much for them. I'd agree, as in my experience, opium, heroin, Oxy's, morphine, and the like have a more robust effect -- all that I've courted, too -- but there's something unique in Tramadol's formula, in that it is a synthetic that operates as an opioid analog and SNRI simultaneously, a unique valence in its class. On it, there's seemingly nothing that is an obstacle -- no fear -- no pain --

My best and most productive writing was on the drug. I could sit for hours in a jhanic-like absorption, my mind a chariot pulled by steel-eyed horses, and I could go wherever I wanted for as long as I wanted to steal words and give them to the page. Seven thousand words of prose a day would not be uncommon for me.

The problem was the seizures. They started small at first, little zaps and jolts when I'd lay down at 2AM -- and over time they multiplied in strength and frequency. Worse still, the effects of the drug were only maintained with my 300mg daily dose, and the warm embrace and dissolution that she'd given me before was always another 100mg away, a line that would curse me with nausea, more jolts, constipation -- a painful bargain for that sweet love that she once gave to me.

My days as an addict would be structured around the acquisition, consumption, management, and obfuscation of my Love -- who I hid from those around me. If I was close to running out of pills, I'd make an excuse to go out and buy more -- "Does anybody want some ice cream, it's so hot out?", "I need a drive to clear my head", "I'll go pick up lunch." The empty blister packs would be stashed in a bag in my office, that I would empty under the cover of darkness -- sometimes they'd spill out and would be seen but nobody said a word to me about them. This is what made me feel dirty, not Her.

My Love Affair with Tramadol was long and I decided to quit one day -- for no good reason at all. I suppose all things run their course, and so there wasn't any great heroic reason that I can point to as to why I stopped, but I did cold turkey. A hellish week followed -- suicidal fevers, bed-ridden, a destroyed will, with seemingly no light at the end of that tunnel. The jolts continued, and still do this day, even a year and a half after my last taste of Her.

But my feelings have returned. I laugh and anger again -- maybe more than before, maybe to make up for all that lost time -- and I'm only now starting to write again, just not as much as before.