Overmedicated
My lost years
In the summer of 2010, having just turned 40, I was on the verge of starting my new teaching career. I had finished my teacher training the month before and was waiting for my probation year to start.
It was the summer holidays, and my young teenage son was in his bedroom playing on his Xbox, while I was on the phone to NHS 111 thinking I was having a heart attack.
This incident was the start of a process that would lead me into drug dependency, which I would not escape from for another 8 years.
The pain
The pain in my chest wasn’t a heart attack, thankfully, but the pain remained in my upper back and chest. I was given Co-Dydramol to help me manage it until a cause was found.
So a process of testing and guessing began.
Some were convinced it was my gall bladder until that was ruled out.
Was it musculoskeletal? No.
I was sent to gastroenterology, who did diagnose stomach issues and so I was given proton pump inhibitors to add to my ever-growing repeat prescription.
Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately in retrospect, the physician in gastro also knew about fibromyalgia and could diagnose it by using the pressure point test. He had a student with him that day and he was keen to show his skill, and so I was given a diagnosis.
The diagnosis
The results were sent to my GP and from that point forward, I had access to a never-ending supply of codeine. An opiate.
I had never heard of fibromyalgia before. So, as any computer-literate person would, I consulted Dr Google. I also joined forums and Facebook groups. Groups full of sick people. I was now a sick person. I believed that about myself. After all, highly trained professionals were telling me I was sick and that I should just keep taking the drugs.
The fog
By the time of my diagnosis, I had already started and left my probation year. I was unable to cope. I had a very large class of 5–6 year-olds and I remember one day, taking some codeine in the class to help with the pain, and a warm enveloping sensation sweeping over me. A fog wrapped itself around me like a blanket and the more I used it the more I needed it.
I would joke about this with colleagues and friends. Minimising the seriousness of what these pills were really doing.
The shame
By 2017, I had lost myself. I had descended into a pathetic person. I was in constant pain. I developed a shoulder injury and was given ever-increasing painkillers on top of the codeine I was already taking.
I applied for disability benefits and at my assessment session the nurse rolled her eyes at a colleague, nodding her head towards me.
I was diagnosed with depression for the first time. More pills. I was signed off work.
The realisation
My son was 14 when all this first started. He was now about to turn 22. Writing this now makes me so sad for being a shell of a mother to him during this time. It is his love and understanding that helped me find my way out.
I had begun to wonder if the diagnosis I had was really what was going on. At no point, had any professional ever questioned the amount of painkillers I was taking.
No one looked at my lifestyle for clues.
I had been a single parent of a teenager, about to embark on a new career. Had I just been stressed?
When I looked back, I realised that the heart attack I thought I was having was just bad gastric pain from the stomach issues I was eventually diagnosed with. The fibromyalgia was an add-on.
Having recovered quickly from the depression and binned the antidepressants, I began to wonder if I could get off of the other pills.
I had begun to wonder if the pain I was feeling was actually the effects of drug withdrawal, rather than fibromyalgia. Was I willing to find out?
The withdrawal
It was a conversation I had with my stepmother that kickstarted my withdrawal. Her daughter had also been on codeine and had managed to get off of it. She’d had withdrawal symptoms for two weeks.
Two weeks? I could cope with that.
I decided to go cold turkey as any previous attempt at reducing the medication had failed.
I got all the medication from my house and returned them to the pharmacy.
It was all or nothing.
Now, codeine is an opiate, like heroin and fentanyl and the withdrawal process has a lot of similarities.
That two-week withdrawal period was wildly optimistic.
On the first day, I felt like Euan McGregor’s character, Renton in Trainspotting. You know the scene? Baby on the ceiling?
My skin was crawling, my legs were twitching, the pain was incredible and my bowels were explosive. A friend called and asked if I had shit myself yet. Not quite, but it was extreme.
The dawn
Within a couple of days, I could see positive changes, some of which were profound.
Colour returned to my vision.
I had not realised the extent to which I had been living in a dulled-down version of the world. Everything was now clearer and brighter.
I was determined to keep going, to give myself the best shot at being drug-free. I wasn’t going through that first weekend for nothing.
In the end, my recovery took about two months.
The pain had been extreme at times and it tested my resolve to its absolute limits, but I made it. Thank god.
The hurt
Along with the benefits of being drug-free, came the realisation that there had been no need for me to have been on them at all. An occasional paracetamol would have been enough.
I was angry. Really angry.
I had wasted 8 years believing myself to be sick.
8 years of drugs doing god knows what long-term damage to my body.
8 years of pain.
8 years of not being fully present.
Hours and hours lost, spent sleeping on the sofa from the effects of the drugs.
I am now deeply suspicious of modern medicine. I have not gone near codeine since. It is rare for me to even take a paracetamol.
It had all been so pointless.
Reflections on healthcare
I don’t blame the doctors per se. No one set out to do me any harm. The NHS is so strapped for time, that as soon as they could stick a diagnostic label on my symptoms, they just gave me the drugs and left me alone.
No lifestyle analysis.
No discussion about drug reduction or withdrawal.
There’s just no time for that.
In Scotland, where I live, prescriptions are free so any overuse of prescription medication is a huge burden to NHS Scotland. A Medicines in Scotland Report, published in 2020, found that medicines took up 13.1% of the total health budget. The report also stated that the top two most commonly prescribed medications were Omeprazole (3.6 million items) and Co-Codamol (2.7 million items), in an adult population of around 4.6 million adults! I’m ashamed to have contributed to that drain on resources.
This is a failure of a public health system, but it happens in places where illness is incentivised. In places where sick people equal profit, they will be medicated to the hilt.
The present
It has been almost six years since my withdrawal and I am doing good.
I may or may not have fibromyalgia, and I know that some people really suffer with it, so I don’t wish to undermine their experience. I know that if I do too much, I really struggle with fatigue, which is a symptom but the pain is rare now.
I take really good care of my health and well-being.
I have a granddaughter now, who has added even more colour to my life.
I am in control of who I am and I no longer choose to be a sick person.
Author’s note:
When I joined Medium, this was the one story I wanted to write.
I know many people are caught in a similar situation.
I am certainly not a medical professional and this is not medical advice. Nor am I encouraging anyone to come off their prescription medication.
What I am encouraging people to do, is question what is going on with their healthcare. What is fact and what is a guess?
Is there a better alternative to the pharmaceuticals? If there is an alternative, are you willing to make a change?
I am so proud of myself for doing the hard work. I am now in control of my healthcare, my future, and living in full technicolour.
