You can easily pull apart the 50 mg tramadol and knock out a little bit of the power. It won't be and exact amount but you can certainly lower the amount you take. Also you can dump out the entire capsule and cut the power into 4 or 5 approximate size piles. Again. won't be exact but close enough so you can slowly lower the amount you take each day. You can then either add the small pile to water/soda and drink it down or to totally avoid the taste or buy some empty gelatin caps and put the power into that. There have been many good suggestion made here. It's up to him to follow them or just keep talking about it.