Apologies for Long Rambly Post

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I think it’s time to share something with you.  The fact that I’ve taken almost 3 weeks to finally get round to finishing this entry speaks for itself.

For over 35 years I’ve battled – on and off – with a codeine addiction in the form of over the counter painkillers originally taken for period pain at a time when I would have had no clue what the words ‘addiction’ ‘junkie’, ‘cold turkey’ or any other similar term meant.

The tablets I took (Feminax) came in a metal tube of ten and were ginormous – or at least they were to me who was used to nothing more than tiny Aspirin or Beechams powders being the sole medicinal content of our bathroom cabinet at home!  I therefore took one at a time not imagining for a second you could take two and I DO have clear memories of reading the leaflet one day and being amazed that the normal dose was two at a time.  Why I was reading the leaflet remains a mystery but whatever the reason I presume I must have then taken two at some point and got some sort of mild buzz when I did.

There’s no memory of that but there is evidence in my diary of 1977 that I was taking them occasionally to lift low mood or when I was really struggling with my weight or had overeaten.  By then I had come down to Aberdeen to College so had been plunged into independent life at aged 17. Just. Which is really quite young when I think of it – certainly it would have been in 1975 – but even nowadays I think that’s quite a lot to contend with at that age.

Six months later Dad died suddenly and when I finished my college course I came back up to Inverness to live with Mam for a year.  That wasn’t really my choice but I was finding it hard to find a permanent job and somewhere to live in Aberdeen and I think it was seen as convenient because it would be company for her now that she was on her own.  Poor Mam – I don’t think a teenage daughter is the best person to live with when you’re newly grieving for your recently lost life partner, especially when that teenage daughter has just had a taste of living away from home!

It was a difficult year.

Anyway I plodded on and there is plenty evidence to show I was constantly battling with low mood, intense sugar cravings and very low self-esteem which I think was in part to do with raging PMS – not something of which there was so much awareness in those days.  I was also well ensconced in the binge/diet syndrome at that time which would have caused its own problems and certainly not helped the PMS and I was probably going through a grieving process for Dad as well but didn’t realise it.  I can only imagine that I was starting to realise the tablets would help me cope with all of that.

Thankfully they hadn’t become a daily event at that stage.  I’m not sure when that actually happened but it’s obvious they were being used outwith period times and I think they had, in effect, become my own personal anti-depressant.

When I became pregnant with Nikki I was naturally enough seriously worried about them and told the doctor.  He made light of it and said not to worry and try to have plain paracetamol instead if need be.  He was a bit of a joker although a really nice guy and I clearly remember him saying “just stick one in each ear instead” as I left the room and me laughing but knowing inside this was wrong and he wasn’t taking it seriously enough.

There was no internet in your living room in those days so I couldn’t do any research of my own but I made a gargantuan effort not to take any for the next 9 months which was no mean feat given that I felt sick for the whole pregnancy.

Because the underlying reason hadn’t been dealt with and I now had the added stress of a young baby and an alcoholic husband I was happy to resume taking them when needed and eventually I went back to a different doctor to try and get help.  He put me on pure liquid codeine the plan being to wean me off by reducing the amount each time but I couldn’t even stomach the first day!  That stuff is absolutely disgusting and it felt like I’d gone cold turkey – I poured it down the sink and was too ashamed to face the doctor but, realising that wasn’t going to help anything, I went back to fess up.  He concluded it was probably more of a psychological addiction and said we’d be better to try tapering the tablets themselves.

I had much more success with this and managed to get down to half a tablet a day but taking that final step was proving hard.  It didn’t help that I wasn’t feeling any better at all and one night, after going to an evening class where I struggled to concentrate through a monster headache, I came home and tried to talk to Boyd.  I couldn’t think properly, my head was pounding away, my speech was all garbled and he said he couldn’t make out what I was saying.  I couldn’t stand it any longer and took 2 tablets finally getting relief.

Back to Square One.

Of course it didn’t need to be – I could have started again the next day but to me it was a massive failure and there was no incentive to repeat the experience so it wasn’t long before I was back up to the same dose.

Thankfully, by some miracle, I never went down the road of taking more to get the same effect because, purely by chance, I discovered that certain foods taken with the tablets enhanced their effect.  So although that took care of the tolerance issue, it screwed up my diet with the result I was eating a very rigid, unbalanced range of foods very much lacking in proper nutrition.  Had you said at the time that I was well on the way to developing an eating disorder I would have said what a load of complete crap but with the wisdom of hindsight I can see that that’s exactly what was happening.

4 years ago when the menopause came along, I went into something called the perimenopause which just about finished me off but before all the symptoms were diagnosed, I instantly thought the whole addiction thing had caught up with me and I’d done some serious damage to something inside.

Panicking I went back to the doctor and asked for a referral to the local Substance Misuse Unit.  Had I been on hard drugs I would have received all sorts of support and although the same sort of support was available to me it just wasn’t appropriate for an over the counter addiction.  I had blood tests done which came back okay so they concluded that my body was tolerating the dose I was on and not to worry too much but not to increase it any further.  End of story.

I was shocked.

But the whole thing had scared me enough to start tapering on my own and also to realise how much my diet was involved in this – I could see that I couldn’t tackle one without tackling the other.  Back to the doc again I asked for a referral to the Eating Disorders Clinic and in September last year I started reducing the tablets from 9 daily (8 mgs of codeine in each) by one tablet a month then by half a tablet a month.

The longest, slowest taper ever!

I also found an excellent support website with lots of brilliant advice, helpful information and most of all, constant encouragement with no judging and it’s there that I log onto every morning and night to see me through this.

I’m now down to 4 tablets a day but I haven’t managed to get through a month yet without a relapse usually due to a monster migraine which nothing will touch apart from codeine.  Codeine causes rebound headaches which can be pretty severe so basically the cure is probably causing the symptom but hopefully these will gradually decrease in time.  So far this month I haven’t relapsed so my aim is to get to the 19th when my next drop is and celebrate one whole month of sticking to the taper for once!  At least I haven’t let any of the relapses stop me from climbing straight back on that wagon so that’s something.

The Eating Disorders Clinic sessions worked while I was there but it’s all gone to ratchet again since I had to stop in February so I’ve asked the doc for another referral.  While I was there she also suggested trying sertraline, an anti-depressant which has some success with opiate addiction and also OCD. I absolutely HATE the side effects which come with anti-depressants and haven’t tolerated them well in the past so I’m in two minds as to what to do about this. I could have a hellish month but then feel much better in the long run or have a hellish month and find absolutely nothing’s changed which would depress me further and this whole thing is hard enough as it is – I’m not keen to add something else to the mix unless it’s going to have a positive effect. So although I know everyone reacts to drugs differently, if anybody’s got any experiences of it – positive or negative – I’d welcome them.

The website I log on to every day was instrumental in getting the addiction warnings put on medicine packets and initiating the speech you get (or should get) in pharmacies when you buy products with codeine in, asking if you take any other medicine and warning that usage should only be for 3 days maximum.  Of course that speech is useless when you’re already addicted although the first time a pharmacy assistant said it to me I nearly died, thinking they were on to me!

There are thousands upon thousands of people addicted to over the counter medicine and not enough support out there for it and the more I learn about codeine the more I’m horrified to know just how much it affects your brain, thinking, behaviour, life in general.  I could go on and on about it but this entry is long enough and you know me – can’t summarise anything to save my life ……

The thing that horrified me the most though was when reading through old diaries to see if there was any mention of taking the tablets for other reasons than period pain, I kept coming across exactly the same issues and misery then as exists today which seriously makes me wonder if I’ve had undiagnosed clinical depression all this time and I’ve just got very good at hiding it.

Who knows?  The fact remains I’m ashamed of it.  I’m guilty about it.  I’m horrified it’s gone on so long.  But at least I’m trying to do something about it now.  Better late than never.

I’ll post my progress in amongst other entries because I know those of you who have no experience of addiction won’t understand the hold it has and I don’t want it taking over my diary – I’ve written screeds of private entries in here trying to get my feelings down on paper in the hope it might purge stuff but I don’t know if it’s helped or not.

If you’ve got this far thank you for sticking with me – I just needed to get this out.

It’s been a long time coming.