My personal experience with tramadol is that there is a peak effect, after about a week of heavy use, doesn't matter how much you take, I was up to 500mg a pop, you don't get the euphoria anymore, just the wakefulness. Unlike codeine I found that after a while, doesn't matter how much you take there's no nod etc. IMHO, if you take tramadol occassionaly, say 200mg its great, but no good for long term use, for me at least, and coming off it from a high dose gives the wd from hell, I've wd 6 times and believe me, its not pleasant, and much worse than codeine/DHC w/d.