‘It was frighteningly simple to get drugs from a doctor’
The Daily Telegraph discovered how frighteningly easy it is to access the drugs fuelling the opioid epidemic.
NSW
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THE Daily Telegraph discovered how frighteningly easy it is to access the drugs fuelling the opioid epidemic.
In visits to two Sydney doctors, we were given the drugs at the root of the crisis with only cursory checks.
The first doctor handed over a prescription for Nurofen Plus.
The next day, at a busy medical centre, we were given a prescription for both oxycodone and Valium.
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I had read about the widespread abuse of prescription opioids and benzodiazepines, the tragedies they cause every day in Australia and how easy they are to obtain.
Surely, it couldn’t be that easy? It was, in fact, frighteningly simple.
Until January this year, codeine was available over the counter but was reclassified as a prescription-only medicine in response to the growing number of deaths associated with it. Oxycodone and diazepam — the latter commonly known as Valium — have always needed a prescription.
They are dangerous medicines on which people easily become dependent.
But I was unprepared for the ease with which they were handed to me by doctors in Sydney.
The first doctor I saw asked me a number of questions about the pain I was in and about my health in general, but handed me a prescription for Nurofen Plus, which contains ibuprofen and codeine — perceived as being at the lower end of the scale for opioids, but an opioid, nonetheless.
The second doctor, the next day, was in a busy inner city surgery which had a notice at the desk stating that it did not prescribe drugs of addiction, such as codeine, oxycodone, fentanyl, pethidine and tramadol.
Because there is no generally accessible record for GPs to cross check patients’ records, she had no clue that I had been prescribed a codeine-based medicine the day before.
She asked me questions about the pain and I mentioned, in passing, that it was affecting my sleep.
Completely unprompted by me, she said she would write a prescription for Valium, a benzodiazepine commonly given to combat pain, anxiety and insomnia.
“Benzos” claimed the lives of 668 people in Australia in 2016 — the latest date for which figures are available. I should take one at night to relax me, she said.
Then she wrote a prescription for oxycodone that I should take three times a day, but I could take up to four, if I needed it.
She gave no warnings about the drugs being central nervous system and respiratory depressants, or that I should not consume alcohol with them.
According to pain specialist Dr Jennifer Stevens, from St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney, the two drugs should not be taken together — and never with alcohol.