I have Burning Mouth Syndrome. I have had it for 14 years. It is a constant stabbing burning pain and it is agonizing.
I was given Tramadol by the man I was about to marry. The pain always becomes more intense with stress and I was in terrible pain while I was planning a big wedding. Finally I had to stop planning and go to bed to lie down in a quiet dark room.
After a few days of this, my fiance brought tramadol he had left after a back injury. I took 2 and was amazed when the pain stopped for the first time in years. I was able to finish planning the wedding and very grateful to have finally found a way to stop my pain. I was so relieved and so happy!
A few days before the wedding all the pills were gone. I thought that at least the planning was finished and that since the stress was over the pain would be dialed back to the how it was before the increase from stress of planning.
But that was not what happened. Pain became worse than it had ever been and on top of that my emotions fell apart and I could not stop sobbing, had to go back to bed and realized I could not go through with the wedding.
I was feeling hysterical, crying loudly, uncontrollably, begging him to get me enough tramadol to just get through the wedding. I could not function at all.
My fiance finally took me to his prescribing doctor and told him what had happened. The doctor lectured him about sharing drugs and told him that he had caused me to go into withdrawals. I sat in the office unable to stop crying, begging for help.
The doctor told us he would have to put me back on tramadol and then very gradually decrease the dose, tapering until I could be taken off it.
I had to be married while still having less intense but still very painful withdrawals. A bad experience, a miserable wedding.
It was even harder to take the pain then, knowing that there was a way to stop it. The doctor would not prescribe for me having seen how quickly I had become dependant.
I hated my wedding and I hated my life of constant pain and could not accept it and try to cope again as I had before.
The marriage didn't last very long. I never again had anything to ease the pain. Even now, 9 years later, the pain is intolerable. There seems to be no help for me and all I can do is look forward to a day there is either a treatment for Burning Mouth Syndrome or I get old enough to die.
This hopeless may not be of help to anyone. But that is my experience of sudden fast painful addiction to tramadol.
I hope with all my being that someday there will be a way to ease the pain enough to have a life again.
It is a story without a moral or resolution. I do not want to be addicted ever again. But it just really really sucks having my life taken by this pain that never ends.