Better Living Through Neurochemistry - A guide to the optimization of serotonin, dopamine and the neurotransmitters that color your world

by James Lee

The only legal serotonin releasing agent available (the pain reliever tramadol) is also fraught with danger as it also has a mild opiate agonist action, making it potentially addictive for some. I actually have a vaguely controversial opinion regarding tramadol. It is one of the few legally available drugs which you can take and it improves your mood within a few hours. As you know, antidepressants take weeks to lift your mood. This is because tramadol does a few things as the same time, making it quite an interesting drug. Among other things it acts as a – Serotonin releasing agent (improving mood) Noradrenaline re-uptake inhibitor (gives you energy and lifts mood) Opiate agonist (dulls both mental and physical pain) NMDA antagonist (NMDA antagonists are the latest subject of research into new antidepressants as certain NMDA antagonists such as ketamine have been shown to lift depression in hours, not weeks!) I believe there is a role to play for a drug like tramadol, if respected appropriately and only in very specific circumstances. There is a growing band of people claiming that when nothing else worked, tramadol lifted them out of their dark hole. However I should also point out that there is an equally large group of people telling of the horrors of quitting either large doses or long term use. This is another drug not to be trifled with and I am still not convinced of its effectiveness as a long term treatment for depression, due to the serotonin releasing p...