Pill addicts need help
Through no fault of their own, Niki Jones, Stevie Lewis and Tony Preece each found their way into the hell of drug dependency, as a result of medication they’d been prescribed by their doctors.
They were taking pills commonly prescribed to treat pain, depression, anxiety and insomnia and were soon locked into a vicious cycle of agonising side-effects and crippling withdrawal symptoms.
But like many thousands of other innocent victims, they were left to battle their demons alone — for many years — without any support or advice from the medical profession that had put them in this situation in the first place.
Niki Jones, now 47, from Llanfihangel Tal-y-llyn, Powys, spent ten years struggling to free herself from the grip of the opioid painkiller fentanyl she was prescribed for severe facial nerve pain.
‘I can’t understand why I was left on a drug as strong as fentanyl for all those years, let alone that I didn’t get the help, information or support I needed to come off it,’ she says. ‘I’m incredibly angry.’
When she tried to stop taking her medication, she experienced withdrawal symptoms including the horror of akathisia, a movement disorder common during withdrawal that she describes as feeling like ‘your whole body is trying to turn itself inside out’, constant panic attacks and overwhelming feelings of ‘sadness, fear and intense rage’.
‘Death seemed the only sensible way out — at the time it was a logical solution to this level of suffering,’ she told good health.
When Stevie Lewis went to her gP with insomnia, the business consultant was prescribed the antidepressant paroxetine. It took her 20 years to break free. Whenever she tried to stop taking it, she suffered ‘tremendous nausea and dizziness’, says the 64-year-old from rogiet, South Wales.
A few days after quitting, she would feel highly anxious and tearful — which her doctor misinterpreted as an anxiety disorder, ordering her to stay on the pills.
Environmental scientist Tony
Preece visited his doctor 23 years ago after stress at home and work began triggering panic attacks.
It was the start of a nightmarish roller-coaster of prescribed drugs, each with punishing side-effects and withdrawal symptoms, says the 59-year-old from Worcester.
‘I was put on a chemical conveyor belt with no support to help me get off it,’ says Tony.
Stories like theirs are adding to the growing pressure on the government to implement the recommendations of an NhS report on prescription pill dependency published in September.
The recommendations included setting up a 24-hour helpline and website to offer support to the thousands of patients who find themselves with nowhere to turn.
The report, commissioned following pressure by the All Party Parliamentary group (APPg) for Prescribed Drug Dependence, backed by a Daily
Mail campaign, says the helpline and website should carry information about drugs, including common side-effects, advice on withdrawal, including details of symptoms and strategies for tapering the dose down, and contact details for local specialist support services.
Now there are calls on the government to set up the helpline and website as a matter of urgency. The report is ‘a huge step forward and points the way to measures that will do a great deal to diminish the scale of over-prescribing and dependence on prescription drugs for the future’, says Sir oliver Letwin, until recently the MP for West Dorset and chair of the APPg.
‘But we mustn’t forget there are many thousands of patients caught in dependence and we need proper support for those patients now,’ says Sir oliver, who last week