Tramadol abuse and street value

[hippiedoc13]

How often do you guys see tramadol being abused, or diverted for street sales? Also, any idea how much the street value might be?

One of my attendings/clinic director was polling our residents recently to find out to what extent we suspect it is being abused or diverted in our patient population. Apparently our clinic is considering putting a limit on how many tramadol can be dispensed per month to a single pt (we have an in-house dispensary so we actually can do this). Tramadol has become one of the highest volume drugs going out of our dispensary... apparently there are some ridiculous quantities going out the door, like 240 tabs per month to a single patient.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[TexasPhysician]

I'm only an intern, but in inpatient psych, it seems to be abused quite a bit. No idea how much it costs on the street.

 

[kugel]

Our county psych hospital will not dispense more than 3 days of any BZD, opiate, tramadol...unless the pt is going directly to a professionally-supervised treatment facility (e.g. nursing home, residential drug treatment center, etc.)

Another place I worked, we had a policy of only giving enough "until the next day clinics are open."

 

[hippiedoc13]

It's helpful to hear that others have perceived this as a problem too, and that other institutions are putting limits on tramadol similar to their limits on benzos and opiates.

[On a side note, to clarify, in my setting, I think most of those tramadol prescriptions I referred to (incl 240 tabs to one pt) were coming from the primary care providers at the clinic. So we don't have psychiatrists in my clinic running around giving out enormous amts of pain meds to pts we're seeing for psych...I realized my original post may have made it sound that way...]

 

[deleted6669]

lots of tramadol abuse out there. we have folks coming in with fake back pain and dental pain all the time asking for it.
there are even folks on suboxone to try to get off tramadol....

 

[sunlioness]

I once ran into a vet tech who was stealing it from work.

 

[kugel]

I once ran into a vet tech who was stealing it from work.

You ran over someone because he was stealing tramadol from work?!

JK