Doctors write six million prescriptions for painkillers in a year
Dad-of-three Steven Mcgowan begged his GP for help after plunging into addiction and taking dozens of painkillers every day.
And he was given more pills. Steven told how he became addicted to prescription opiates for almost 20 years.
The 45-year-old said a turbulent time in his life prompted him to take dozens of pills each day but when he went to his GP for help, he was prescribed more.
Steven, from Stirling, said: “I had been drinking quite heavily, and it progressed from there.
“I got dihydrocodeine from my GP as I had been taking other opiates which I bought on the streets, and I knew I needed help.
“I was prescribed more opiates for an existing opiate problem. At points I was prescribed tramadol, dihydrocodeine, co-codamol and codeine.
“I was given a lot of them, and it didn’t help at all. I ended up taking more and more.
“Any time I got them from the doctor, they never lasted. I always took too many. I would phone up the GP and say things like I’d left them on the bus, and I’d get another prescription.
“The more I got, the more I took and eventually I was back to buying them from chemists and on the streets. I’d get them from pensioners, cancer patients ... anyone who wanted to make money.”
Steven was eventually referred to Castle Craig Hospital, a specialist facility for addiction, and is in recovery after withdrawing completely from opiates.
He now works with other people who have addictions, and as a mentor.
Steven also trains people who are at risk of overdosing from heroin how to use naloxone, which can save their lives. More than six million prescriptions for opiate painkillers were collected from chemists last year, according to NHS Scotland figures.
Around 35,000 morphine, 200,000 co-codamol, 74,000 tramadol and 11,000 codeine prescriptions were written every month in 2017, while fentanyl, a painkiller up to 100 times the strength of heroin, was prescribed more than 90,000 times during the year.
Dr Ahmed Khan, chairman of the addictions psychiatry faculty at the Royal College of Psychiatry in Scotland, said he has seen a huge rise in people coming to him for help with opiate addiction in the last decade, with some patients taking up to 150 tablets a day when they arrive in his clinic.
He said: “Looking back 10 years ago, people who had addictions to prescription opiates were fairly rare. I’d maybe see one person a year. Now, I see one a fortnight.”
Dr Khan, who works in South Lanarkshire, said addiction to prescription opiates “creeps up on people”.
He explained: “With prescription opiate users it’s a very slow, gradual thing. I see people who are taking between 80 to 150 co-codamol a day, but they are very keen to say: ‘It was my doctor who started this’.
“People are very aware of the stigma and they put a lot of emphasis on that. They’ll say things like: ‘I’m not a junkie’.
“There is also a huge hidden population who will take years to access help, if they ever do. It’s a very slow, creeping thing whereby the doctor may start giving them six tablets, and gradually it escalates to 80.
“People get them from doctor-shopping, which is when they see different doctors in the same practice, but the majority is sourced from over-thecounter medication or accessed online.”