 Over the Counter Drug Abuse
There is an article in today’s (21-01-09) Daily Telegraph regarding the rising problem of prescription and over the counter drug addiction. This is a problem that we have been aware of for some time, after all ‘a drug, is a drug, is a drug’ regardless of its origins. Many drugs available without prescription are open to abuse; sleeping tablets, cough mixture, codeine based painkillers, diet pills etc. Also many patients are adept at manipulating doctors (visiting different surgeries for instance) to gain stronger drugs such as diazepam, valium and other mood and mind altering substances.
What tends to vary is general attitudes towards this type of addiction, if abused drugs are prescribed by a doctor a patient can almost justify and rationalize their addiction as ‘legitimate’ as it has been prescribed by a doctor. Likewise if a patient buys something ‘over the counter’ they can kid themselves that there isn’t a problem as they are not ‘buying drugs of the street’.
The strangest addiction of over the counter drugs I have ever come across was a middle-class mum with 2 children who would drop her kids off at school and then drive to London and visit at least 8 different chemists to buy cough medicine and codeine based painkillers, because she did this daily she would have to vary the pharmacies she visited in order to not raise suspicion (she was in fact banned from many). Used in these quantities the cough medicine produced an opiate like effect (similar to taking heroin). This woman was a hopeless addict, just like any other, after many years of living this way and using these drugs to cope she finally checked herself into rehab.
This is a rising problem and one that needs to be addressed, there needs to be more awareness and education for the general public and amongst healthcare professionals. I have seen many clients over the years whose main addiction has been prescription or over the counter drugs.
Addiction can happen in many forms and an addict will try many ways to ‘hide’ or justify their using, it still boils down to the same thing. ‘An addict is an addict, is an addict’.
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