Doctors write six million prescriptions for painkillers in a year

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.”