Like Ant, I became addicted to opioid painkillers prescribed by doctors... and it ruined my life
Demons that drove Ant to a painkiller and drink addiction
Yesterday it was reported that tV’s ant McPartlin has gone into rehab, two years after ‘botched’ knee surgery left him addicted to the opioid painkiller tramadol (it’s thought he was taking oxycodone and fentanyl, too — also opioids).
Opioids are extremely addictive but as the Mail has highlighted, patients are given virtually no support to come off them.
Cathryn Kemp, 45, a writer who lives in Hastings, east sussex, with her threeyear- old son, struggled with opioid dependency for two years following pancreas surgery. Here she tells her shocking account of how easy it is to fall prey to these drugs. ‘ My descent into painkiller addiction started on a hospital ward. For threeand-a-half years I’d been in excruciating pain — it felt like red hot maggots eating me alive.
For most of that time I was in hospital on a drip, or injections, of morphine and sometimes pethidine. When I wasn’t in hospital, I had a liquid morphine derivative (oxycontin) and tramadol.
‘I seemed to be on higher and higher doses — I later found out your body rapidly develops tolerance to opioids in as little as three days, so you need more for the same effect.
‘the opioids took the edge off my pain and made life bearable for short periods. But I began to live for the next dose and, as the previous dose wore off, I’d experience terrible sweating, muscle pain and delirium, the classic symptoms of withdrawal, but the doctors didn’t recognise this and just gave me more tramadol.
My life revolved around the opioids I had to take every few hours. I had previously been an independent travel writer, but, on the drugs, I had to move home to be looked after by my parents because I was so ill and weak with pain.
In 2007, a specialist diagnosed the problem — a muscular valve around my pancreas was too tight. the good news was that surgery could ease this.
Following several operations, and three months in hospital — most of the time on a drip of another opioid drug, fentanyl, which I was told was more powerful than morphine — I was eventually discharged.
I moved into a cottage near my parents with my boyfriend, who cared for me. although I still had pain, I was given opioids to cope at home — fentanyl patches.
each was supposed to last three days, but because I was still in pain I was also given fentanyl lozenges — a bit like berryflavoured lollipops — and told I could take up to eight a day.
THE drug gave me a fastacting fix of pain relief and I began to crave it. It didn’t take me long to be on the maximum dose of eight I was told to take. through no fault of my own I’d become an opioid drug addict.
Within a couple of months I was on 11 or 12 lozenges a day and I’d beg my GP for more.
He did his best to keep my doses under control, but I’d experience such bad withdrawal symptoms, vomiting and diarrhoea, hallucinations, sweating and violent shaking that I’d need to take an even higher dose to prevent this.
slowly, my daily dose crept up and up. I just lived for my fentanyl and if I didn’t get it, I started going into withdrawal.
I’d spend all day in bed totally ‘ out of it’. It was no life. Not surprisingly, my relationship with my boyfriend broke up: after three years of my illness, followed now by my growing fentanyl dependence over the past three months, he couldn’t take any more.
to his credit, my GP tried to help and referred me for electro- acupuncture, which is supposed to help with withdrawal symptoms, but it had no effect. By this stage I was taking 45 lozenges a day. My family thought I was on 15, which was bad enough — but I was hiding my true usage as I was so ashamed.
Mum would come round and leave a flask of tea and some fruit on my bedside table as some days I couldn’t even make it downstairs. In the mornings I’d wake bathed in sweat from the withdrawal symptoms and I’d shake as the dts kicked in.
In september 2009 my GP referred me to the local substance misuse service — it was full of homeless people queuing up to get their methadone. I don’t think anyone intends to become a drug addict and I don’t judge them, but I didn’t think it was an appropriate place for me, though I was exactly like them, I just didn’t know it: I was a drug addict.
I saw a counsellor there who explained that they’d put me on methadone to wean me off the fentanyl — but then he said it was more addictive than morphine.
I felt scared and couldn’t face having to collect my daily methadone from the village pharmacy.
It also seemed the wrong way to bring me off: I was going to need round-the-clock support. I applied to go into a residential NHs drugs detox unit, but was turned down — my GP said he thought it was because I wasn’t homeless or an offender.
towards the end of 2009, my GP told me I was an addict and I screamed at him that I was just in a lot of pain and needed my medication and that didn’t make me an addict. I had to take some respon- sibility — but I was prescribed these drugs by a doctor and never thought they would do me harm.
By February 2010, after two years of prescribing me fentanyl, my GP said he was going to cut off my supply. He said I had one week’s prescription left and that was it.
I now know the cold turkey approach is the worst way to come off opioids because the withdrawal symptoms are so severe.
FEELING sick with panic, I immediately confessed to my parents how high my usage was and they said they’d pay for me to go to a private drugs detox and rehabilitation unit. I hated that it would cost them £30,000 — but without it I knew I was going to die.
at the rehab unit, I was told I was effectively a heroin addict and would probably be dead within three months as the fentanyl dose I was on was potentially fatal because it depresses breathing.
the detox was challenging: I had hallucinations — I heard music coming out of plug sockets — and bugs were crawling up the walls. But the staff there were experienced in bringing people off opioids and I felt in safe hands.
Within four weeks I was down to just one lozenge. I have never taken another opioid painkiller drug since the day I left there in March 2010 — the strongest drug I’ll take now is paracetamol.
It’s great to feel not ‘out of it’ again, although I still live with pain — but that’s a million times better than being on that horrible drug.
since then I’ve managed to get my life back to some degree; I got married and have a son and am writing again. these days my highs are when my toddler gives me a kiss or sings a song, or I get to notice spring flowers or the sea.
I’ve also founded the Painkiller addiction Information Network charity to campaign for greater awareness of how easy it is to become a prescription painkiller addict and how little specialist help is available on the NHs.
Opioid painkiller dependence is now recognised by the World Health Organisation as a medical condition. there were 12 million prescriptions in the UK for opioids last year — lots of people like me are suffering in silence with long-term addiction. We’ve got to put a stop to this.
Coming Clean: Diary of a Painkiller addict by Cathryn Kemp (little Brown, £10.99).