Unfortunately I didn't get on bupe to stop opioids, I got on it as a way to have a legal substitute, so that I didn't have to keep living a life of "get high for a bit and then withdrawals" forever. Cause I am an opioid "addict" after all, so I have no plans on stopping ever.
Yes, tramadol can cause seizures if you go above 400mg. I was on tramadol for 13 years, the first 10 years I had to withdrawal every month. And then the last 3 years, I had buprenorphine, so I'd just take my bupe when I'm done with the trams & I'd be fine.
Tramadol is another example of low potency but better effects for me. 1 50mg pill of tramadol isn't gonna do much at all for me. But if I take 300-400mg spread over an hour, I use to get a high very similar to heroin, except more stimulating & caused more "music euphoria" (as in, I couldn't stop listening to music because it sounded & felt so good). And it would last 8hrs or some times until I went to bed at night.
So tramadol was much more enjoyable than hydrocodone for me. I just needed way more tramadol than I would hydrocodone to get an effect, that's all potency really means.
I also spent 5 of those years using actual brown heroin before it all became fentanyl. I never shot it up though, needles aren't my thing. I just snorted it & I fully enjoyed it & it worked every time that way, so no need to move onto a needle addiction.
Unfortunately my heroin dealer went to prison for murder in 2019, And my mom was my tramadol connect & she passed away in 2021.
So it's been mostly just buprenorphine for me ever since. I started taking bupe in 2017, so yeah, it's been almost 10 years of daily buprenorphine for me. With little vacations here & there.
I've tried some of the extracts & I thought they were okay. Nothing special though honestly. The "high" lasted probably 30 minutes, if that.
And the damn extract itself was like 20-30 bucks for one fuckin' hit. So I dunno how anyone can even afford to be addicted to kratom, especially the extracts. Cause that would mean I'd be paying over 100 bucks A DAY for an incredibly short acting subpar partial agonist.
Shit I can take my Suboxone & get a better & longer lasting "high" than I would from kratom or any of it's extracts. I think it might be a genetic thing because I've had so many people come to me and swear by kratom & it's extracts. And I've tried it all, from online vendors, to the smoke shop shit, etc.. None of it felt anything like an "opioid" to me. Some of it made me sleepy, but there was no euphoria or anything. And the plant itself has alkaloids in it that act as antipsychotics (dopamine blocking) and I can actually feel that whenever I take powdered or leaf kratom. It's like a dulling of the senses, but not in an enjoyable way. More like an boredom-inducing way.
I wish they worked for me. Although I sure as hell couldn't afford the prices they ask for kratom extracts every day.
Methadone & Loperamide also have toxic effects on the heart.
And even buprenorphine supposedly has a low (but not nonexistent) possibility for long QT syndrome too.
I've actually been having PVC's off & on for the last couple of years with no idea what brought them on. No clue if buprenorphine could've caused it. It's possible. Couldn't get any real answers from my idiots doctors or the cardiologist though.
They said I might have had a heart attack, but probably not. They didn't see any ischemia on my stress test, which should be visible if I had a heart attack. But they saw a very small spot on my heart in the imaging & decided to say it was just an imaging artifact from sub-diaphragmatic activity. Their EKG machine said I had a heart attack at some point too, but the cardiologist told me to disregard it because it "spits out wrong information all the time". Which if that's true, then wtf is the point of using EKGs? Very reassuring.
Also told me they're "benign", which is just medical gaslighting. Feeling like you're being punched in the stomach or your heart is stopping 100x a day, every day is not "benign". It's detrimental to some one's mental health & quality of life. Plus it can lead to sudden death & heart failure. To call that "benign" is just straight up false & gaslighting. It's like me saying "Well I haven't gotten lung cancer despite smoking cigarettes every day for 30 years, so that must mean cigarettes are benign".

But this is all a separate story from the topic of opioids, so I digress.