Prescribed painkillers come with hidden risks
WARNINGS about overdosing on prescription drugs have been issued after six inquests in two weeks in Cornwall highlighted the issue.
The message from Sid Willett, Cornwall’s drug-related death prevention coordinator, is: “Just because it’s prescribed by your doctor doesn’t mean it’s safe”.
Over the last two weeks there have been reports of six inquests in Cornwall alone at which the cause of death was drug-related.
Lisa-Marie Mahoney, aged 27, and her unborn child tragically died after she took too many painkillers. She had a history of lower back pain and had been taking opiate medication for a considerable period of time. Meanwhile, she had been supplementing those drugs with over-thecounter medication.
Her family tried to raise the issue with her but Lisa-Marie, from Camborne, had become addicted to painkillers. She believed she had been taking the tablets for so long that she needed to take more for them to have any effect on her.
Katie Corrigan, a former nurse from St Erth, died aged 38 after she started taking codeine to help deal with neck problems, and she quickly became addicted to the painkiller. She found a loophole meant she was able to request repeat prescriptions early and used her mentor’s details to forge prescriptions and hoard painkilling medication. Sadly, she died last year.
The other four drug-related deaths involved men aged under 50 from Cornwall. Three of them died from taking too many prescription drugs, while one died from taking heroin combined with a strong benzodiazepine banned in the UK.
Dr Keith Mitchell works at the pain clinic at Truro’s Royal Cornwall Hospital. He said: “These recent tragic deaths are a reminder of the danger of the drugs referred to as ‘weak opioids’– principally tramadol and codeine. Like their stronger cousins – morphine, oxycodone, fentanyl – they are addictive, and are more likely to do more harm than good if used continuously long-term. Taken in sufficient numbers, they are fatal. If taken in combination with other sedatives, such as alcohol, pregabalin, gabapentin and benzodiazepines, they can be fatal at much lower doses.”
Dr Mitchell said another problem with painkillers, in particular opioids, is that they provide a tempting means of escape at times of desperation and hopelessness. Opioids are good for managing acute pain, but less helpful for chronic pain.
Opioids become less effective if they are taken for more than a couple of days and their ability to combat pain will be reduced. Meanwhile, opioids are effective at tackling pain associated with injury, like an accident or an operation, the sort of pain which is expected to heal.
Dr Mitchell said beliefs around opioid medication have changed since the late 1990s. He added: “Back then, there was a general belief in my profession that opioid drugs were more effective and less harmful than had previously been thought. This turned out to be a huge mistake.
“The result is that there are a lot of people taking a lot of opioids that are doing them harm. These are addictive medications – reducing the dosage can result in very unpleasant side-effects, including a temporary increase in pain.”
Mr Willett explained that it is never usually one drug which has caused a death. He said: “It might not be overtly that the drug you’ve been given from your GP is the one that’s taken your life, but it might be in combination with others.
“The main reason people die from medicines in particular is because they combine them synergistically with other drugs and respiration decreases to such a degree that the person stops breathing essentially. So it’s not like we can say it’s one particular medicine you should avoid, like a plague doctor, it’s the misuse and overuse of them, that’s the problem.
“There are cases where people have overtaxed their liver by taking too much paracetamol without suicidal intent, but pain being the big thing, they’ve taken one too many and you’ve got a chain reaction of events where your liver is struggling.”
We Are With You provides a free service to young people and adults experiencing issues with drugs, alcohol or mental health. Go to www. wearewithyou.org.uk