VIDEO – FROM CRAMPS TO AMPS –

July 28, 2022 – “It got really bad,” said Sara, now 47, from Pembroke Dock. “Where a doctor might prescribe two painkillers, I would take six or eight in one dose, three or four times a day.”

Sara told her doctor she was afraid she might be addicted.

To help reduce her dependency on codeine she said the doctor prescribed diazepam, from a class of psychoactive drugs called benzodiazepines, most often used to treat severe anxiety. “I would just increase and increase to get that high every single time,” she said. “You can take it for so long and then your body’s used to it. So I would be taking silly amounts.” 

When she started to run out of pills in between prescriptions, she would register at different GP practices, or claim that she had lost her tablets on holiday. “I would take five or six diazepam, five or six zopiclone, 21 antihistamines,” she said. “I just wasn’t with it because I was totally drugged up to the eyeballs.”

more@BBC