Painkiller addicts and a remedy as neatly packaged as a pop-out pill
The bloke on the mobility scooter in hastings high Street shrugged off Dr Michael Mosley’s news that his painkillers were opiates, little different from morphine or even heroin.
It didn’t matter, he said. he couldn’t get addicted: ‘ I don’t touch drugs anyway.’
Addicted To Painkillers: Britain’s Opioid Crisis (BBC2) was a methodical, clearly argued documentary that explained step by step how dangerous prescription medicine can be, and how easy it is to become both physically and mentally dependent on pills doled out in barrowloads by GPs. For the most part Dr Michael sidestepped the temptation to indulge in silly ‘experiments’ to make the show seem more scientific.
I have a feeling the producers wanted to scare us more, with news footage of zombified victims of the U.S. opioid crisis. It’s increasingly easy here, as Dr Michael found out, to order high-strength painkillers without a prescription online but Britain is a long way from the States, where whole towns are numbed by the epidemic of codeine.
he concentrated on setting out a three-part thesis that ought to change the way we treat long-term pain, as thoroughly as he revolutionised the way millions of
MINI STARS OF THE NIGHT: Harry the lizard has been a fixture on Death In Paradise (BBC1) for years, outlasting all the detectives. This time, a mouse called Rothko supplied the vital clue. Who’s next to join the cast — a mosquito called Dracula?
people tackle weight loss when he championed the 5:2 Diet in 2012.
Step one: painkillers are more powerful than you think. Co-codamol, a codeine capsule available over the counter, can be addictive if taken for more than a few days — but one dose of fentanyl a GP prescribes might contain hundreds of co-codamols.
Step two: GPs routinely increase the dosage of painkillers when patients complain of long-term discomfort from old injuries. But all the evidence shows chronic pain, the sort that persists for months or years, doesn’t respond well to drugs. It becomes hardwired, a sort of invisible deformity.
Step three: a low mood makes pain worse. And nothing is more depressing than constant pain. It’s a vicious circle. If we can’t treat the long-term pain, we ought to be finding ways to lift the mental gloom with drugs or therapy.
It’s rare for a television show to summarise a problem, dissect it and suggest a new way to look for solutions. BBC2’s horizon documentaries are too often muddled and smug but this one was as neatly packaged as a pop- out tray of pills, each factlet in its own little foil blister.
Ross Kemp’s report from Britain’s first super-max prison, Welcome To HMP Belmarsh (ITV), has also been a surprisingly measured documentary, avoiding melodrama and cheap scares. The place is scary enough without the need for sensationalism. Many of the 900 inmates can erupt into uncontrolled violence without warning. That quickly gets monotonous, and Kemp was wise to focus on the personalities of calmer prisoners to learn how they cope.
Transgender prisoner and convicted murderer Claire Darbyshire
got a boost from a bottle of hair dye. ‘Go easy,’ warned a prison officer. ‘We don’t want to go too dark.’ You know you’re doing all right when the screws offer fashion tips.
As that old lag Norman Stanley Fletcher knew, one trick is to cultivate a sense of humour. Burglar William Keen was doing his 23rd stint in nick, and he’d known the deputy governor when she was a teenage recruit. ‘he’s the only one who calls me Jenny,’ she sighed.
William declared he’d keep coming back to jail until she agreed to marry him. The look on her face said he’ll have to eat a lot of porridge before that happens.