TL;DR: Appendicitis got me in contact with Tramadol and started an avalanche of recreational drug use in my life

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I woke up at 6am with excruciating pain in my lower abdomen and decided to take a taxi to a hospital close to my area (I did not want to inconvenience emergency services in case I was simply holding back a gigantic monsterfart). I quickly google “hospital” in my area and find one conveniently close. I ring the cab company and they arrive swiftly. By this point I am struggling to walk properly. The taxi ride seems to take ages, but my perception of time was probably skewed thanks to…dying.

As we reach the promising, gated compound I leave the taxi driver with an exorbitant amount of money and walk up to what seems to be some sort of reception planted next to the large entry barrier. I inquire about emergency health services. With a thick cockney accent, the friendly man on the other side of the bullet proof glass tells me that I am at a hospital for the mentally ill. I went to a funny farm. Fuck you, life.

Standing there, in increasingly cold weather, I needed to find out where the nearest _actual_ hospital was located. Turns out that I am not the only one who confused this place with an actual hospital, which may potentially be related to its name lacking the decriptive term “PSYCHIATRIC”. There was a an old piece of paper lovingly taped to the glass doors leading into the hospital right next to the reception. Not sure why the guy couldn’t have told me this in the first place. Maybe I wasn’t radiating death with the necessary enthusiasm for him to acknowledge the state I was in. I call another cab and wait for 15 years. Finally the fucker arrives in his shitty black cab and I tell him to get me the fuck to hopsital. (Somewhere in between waking up with my appendix exploding and ending up at the wrong hospital it seems small talk and social etiquette were facing an increased loss in priorities.)

The driver takes me straight to A&E and I am greeted by the wonderful smell of hospital, bringing me right back to my childhood. I go through all the examinations, get given some codeine (which back then actually had an effect on me which I found rather enjoyable) and admitted to hospital with appendicitis. With utter joy, I realise my inability to work for at least two weeks and, with some uncertainty about whether I should really be this happy about having just scraped what 200 years ago would have been a death sentence, fire off an e-mail from my work BlackBerry. I started praying that they would not put me in a shared room. They did not.

Thank fuck!

They had booked an OR for 3pm, it was 11am or so by this time. Between now and then there was a whole lot of paperwork to be filled in and a lot of questions to be asked by doctors. Two doctors came in to visit me. The first one was a very tall, heavyset teenager (his perfectly smooth round face, puffed up by a diet of carbs and sugar indicating an age of about 15). He had thick, brown curly hair and introduced himself as the surgeon. “Wait wha…?” Before I could finish my thought he had started reeling off a routine he’d obviously practiced many times before. Without making any eye contact (presumably in an effort not to become emotionally attached to patients) he presented me with my two options of surgery (why they would give me the choice is beyond me). The first was one where a relatively large incision is made right above the appendix and they simply cut the fucker out and stitch you up again. Simple in-out procedure leaving the famous scar many people (men) get to show off as battlescar from that time they rescued a kitten from a group of islamic terrorists.

The other procedure involves making three small incisions in a large triangular formation around the appendix, leaving little scars (I am almost sold) and filling the entire abdominal cave with gas (I am slightly less sold) and getting the appendix out using an endoscopic procedure, which is more advanced (I am slightly more sold) and also a lot more difficult to perform (less sold) with higher risk of post-op complications. The guy could hardly finish his sentence before I blurted “The first one!!” at him. (For anyone interested, the first one is an “Open Appendectomy” the second is a “Laparoscopic Appendectomy, I was in no state to remember terms like that at this point).

So I was going to be operated on by Jonah Hill. This was the first doctor.

The second was the guy whom I’d always imagined as having the most fun job in the universe: The anaesthesiologist. Older looking guy going through a questionnaire of substance abuse, medications, known allergies and previous general anaesthesias. Thankfully, back then my replies were simply: None, none, none, 5. That sealed the deal. I was operated on the same day and woke up with absolutely no pain. What I did not realise was that the anaesthetic used during the operation would completely disable my bladder function for a solid 24 hours. But not in the leaky way, nope, in the “fuck, why can’t I take a piss” kind of way. After spending the night in the buzzing, neon-lit toilet cubicle of my hospital room in absolute agony, I non-chalantly told the army of people crowding around me for their morning visit (teaching hospital, fuck) of my slight urinary impairment. I was trying to sound clever. What seemed to be the lead-doctor, or whatever they are called, even more non-chalantly replied that this is a common side-effect of the anaesthesia and I had nothing to worry about. Thanks for letting me know before my 12 hours in hell motherfucker.

I would spend another three days at the hospital with the occasional visits from some of my wonderful friends and develop an almost childlike anticipation for the three meals they served daily. My last hospital visit had been eight years ago and it seems food standards since then have indeed increased. As I feel a stinging pain in my hand, I am reminded of the huge needle implanted in the back of it. Plasters and bandages all around it, tugging away at my skin. I remembered from former hospital visits that removing one these is not as fun as the adverts make it out to be. “Luckily I wasn’t in a teaching hospital, where the staff were still learning how to do these basic procedures without inflicting exorbitant pain”, I deluded myself as the rookie nurse walks into the room trembling and sweating.

I was in for a good time.

See, if there is a needle lodged in one of those big throbbing veins in the back of your hand, the last thing you want is someone pulling off what seemed to be metres of military grade adhesive. There was blood everywhere and the student apologised profusely. This didn’t make me my hand any less black and blue as a result of the mangling, but at least she showed more compassion than Jonah. As the time for me to be released from hospital came around, there was one more glorious item on the list: The painkillers. I hadn’t even felt a pinching sensation the entire time through, but that was not going to stop me from acting like I really needed the strongest shit they could find.

Lo and behold I was rewarded with 30x50mg of Tramadol. I could hardly believe it, as I remember a colleague of mine telling me about this stuff being absolutely divine and super-addictive. Tramadol, or “Tramz” are a step up from Codeine and a notch below morphine. Mostly distributed in pill form and also known as Ultram, Tramazet etc. They also gave me some Diclophenac and a family super-size pack of Paracetamol. Boring. In the evening I took a taxi home, telling the driver to drive carefully as I was still struggling to walk. In a story like this one it feels predictable to say that he took the bumpiest route, riddled with potholes and speedbumps he could find, just to bring this lovely hospital episode to a glorious end!

So now I was at home, armed with my first opiate known for recreational abuse. Other than Diazepam (Valium) in a laughably small dose of 5mg (thanks to a girlfriend) and weed, I had never tried a single ‘drug’ in my life. So this was rather exciting. Given the state I was in, however, I decided to go to bed and try this stuff out the next day. On a beautiful, work-less morning I woke up to the wonderful prospect of taking 2x50mg of Tramadol, but without there being any reason to do so!

Yes, I had finally set foot in the door of the world of recreational chemical abuse. As I swallowed the pills, I eagerly and, probably naively, expected an immediate effect. After about an hour of sitting around, waiting impatiently, I finally started to feel (what would soon become the very familiar) sensation of an opiate high. Warmth starts to gather at the core of your body, radiating outwards into each of your limbs, making gravity lessen its grip on your physical form and allowing you to float smoothly in your movements. Slowly you stop worrying about precision, correctness, worries and problems. They do not disappear, but their power to occupy your mind is taken away. You feel the need to smile a lot and your breathing starts to feel slightly tense, with an almost alcoholic background-taste present in the back of your throat. This is the first stage of the trip. You have reached the plateau. What I had not realised was how long this stuff lasts. We’re speaking 8-10 hours of this feeling. As you become more accustomed to it you start to notice some side-effects. Your limbs become slightly more restless, there is always some sort of a lingering tension wanting to be released, making you rub your legs and hands and arms a lot.

This is by no means an uncomfortable feeling, it’s just ‘there’. Lastly, there seems to be a slight increase in itchyness all over your body. It is minimal however. Tramadol is interesting in the respect that larger doses increase all the positive effects but none of the negative ones. The timespan it lasts for does not seem to change either. One last observation I can make about this drug is that it seems to inhibit most other drugs in their potential. I have tried it in combination with various substances and usually what seems to happen is that the Tramadol appears weaker and the other substance you are taking does next to nothing. Interesting!

On addictive potential I would rate this as an extremely addictive drug as it keeps you completely functional, feels amazing and easy, there is no negative side to it and it is easy to come by and relatively cheap. Unless you develop a tolerance and need to throw 800mg to feel anything. At this point you are guaranteed some serious liver damage and great financial effort to keep up your habit.

Don’t ever fall into that cycle.