depression
"I too am very treatment-resistant to all the conventional antidepressants.  Before I moved to another state, I had a psych doctor who was a good listener.  When I told him that the only time I recall not being depressed was when I had tramadol, he said "well, let's try that". For two years I used it, and felt good: motivated, engaged, curious about things.  If I did stop it cold turkey, I'd have a few days of lethargy before settling back to my blah baseline.

The main side effect is that if I took too much, my short term memory got really bad, and I'd just get sort of dumb.

"