The Ramblings Of A Silly Old Man - CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I USED TO BE A DRUG ADDICT

Did you know that I used to be a drug addict ? Oh yes I was ! The difference was my addiction was to legal prescription drugs and NOT to illegal Class A drugs dispensed daily to victims by the criminal fraternity. My medication from the local pharmacy and heroine from a criminal are from the same source. It would have been some time in early 2015 that I suffered from the most excruciating pain in my lower back and legs.  I went to see my doctor who said I was suffering from sciatica. He prescribed the opium based pain killer Co-codamol. What a miracle drug !  Within a very, very short space of time the pain vanished.  I was cured BUT I was addicted. When a twinge came into my legs I would take drugs and that twinge would go away.  Things then progressed to my taking the drug just in case a twinge came along.  That is addiction isn't it ? Approaching Easter I asked for a repeat prescription, I was running low on my addictive drugs. A new prescription was not going to be ready until after the four day holiday, I had left it too late !  How was I to get through 96+ hours without my fix ?  I was scared silly.

A young friend who worked in the medical profession said to me: You need to get off that stuff, it does your head in. He meant it chemically changes your brain so you can not live without it in your body. EXACTLY as do Class A illegal drugs. I fell off a ladder and broke three of my ribs. The pain was beyond anything I can here describe.  In hospital I was given very strong pain killers but they did not work.  I begged to be given Co-codamol but the doctors said it was not as strong as the medication they were giving to me. I was discharged from the hospital and sent home with a course of pain killers. I never took that medication. As soon as I was home I popped a couple of Co-codamol tablets and all the pain went away. I was a drug addict, an addict hooked for life ! On Friday 19th May 2017 my darling daughter Rebekah died suddenly and unexpectedly. About a week later I realised I had not taken any Co-codamol. I was clean, I was no longer a drug addict but it had taken my daughter's death to get me clean ! I would never take drugs again. That experience has given me an insight into the life of a drug addict, a drug addict who lives at the mercy of evil criminals. The addict has to exist every day as a customer of evil. Exist with no support, exist with no understanding from non-addicts, exist with no future save an early death. Addicts are victims. In England and Wales, there were 4,359 deaths relating to drug poisoning registered in 2018, 603 more than in 2017 when there were 3,756 (a 16% increase). This equates to a statistically significant increase in the drug poisoning rate, with 76.3 deaths per million people in 2018, compared with 66.1 deaths per million in 2017. Thank goodness my addiction was to prescription drugs. Even so it was a high price to pay.