84 PREVENTIONAUS.COM.AU
MAKE-UP FOR MICHELLE ALBERT: LOLA DENNIS.“I was running my husband’s dental practice when
our two boys were in preschool and kindy, so I was
rushed of my feet,” Michelle, now 50, recalls.
“I felt constantly wired from trying to be the
perfect working mum – overseeing homework,
baking, being there for pick-ups and drop-ofs and
hugs and care when the kids were sick. My load
was just too big and I felt overwhelmed and
exhausted and like I had no life.”
When the stress caused chronic headaches,
painkillers helped her soldier on through her
enormous load. And when she also developed
a back injury, Michelle’s dose escalated further.
This triggered a pattern of misuse that
lasted over 20 years. “Over that time, my use of
painkillers went up and down but I took them
every day,” Michelle says. “They often left me in
a bit of a drug stupor, feeling exhausted, foggy in
the brain and sometimes forgetful, but that state
became normal so I still managed to function
and get everything done.”AS ADDICTIVE AS HEROIN
To keep her substance problem a secret, Michelle
travelled around to diferent pharmacies in
Sydney’s eastern suburbs, buying up to 10 packets
of Nurofen Plus at a time. “It was easy to swallow
the drugs in private so no-one saw,” she recalls.
“My husband knew I was using them, but had
no idea how many I was taking.”
Michelle realised she was overdosing on
painkillers but had no idea the risks were so
serious. “I didn’t realise that in my liver, the
codeine was being converted into morphine, so my
constant use was not much diferent to having a
heroin addiction,” she says. “I was so dependentthat I couldn’t even get through the night without
a big dose. I would wake up with severe pain in
my body and head and not realise that was from
withdrawal – the drugs were actually making
my pain worse, not better.”
Like a growing number of women, Michelle
was self-medicating to relieve the stresses of
being a modern mum. But unlike our mother’s
generation, who had Bex and a good lie down
to calm their nerves, we are reaching for
painkillers like Nurofen Plus, Panadeine Forte
and Mersyndol. These all contain codeine, which
like heroin, is from the opiate family and can
quickly cause dependence.
Sobering figures from the University of Sydney
show just how serious the misuse of these meds
has become. The use of prescriptions for opioid
painkillers increased 15-fold from 1992 to 2012,
rising from 500,000 units to approximately
7.5 million in 2012. The number of Australians
being treated in hospital or dying as a result of
opioid painkiller complications is now higher than
heroin. Plus, prescription opioids have become a
primary drug responsible for overdose deaths in
Australia (up 30.4 per cent from 2013-14, including
a 33 per cent increase in rural areas). From 2008-
2014 there was also an 87 per cent increase in
prescription opioid deaths in Australia, according to
the Pennington Institute’s Annual Overdose Report.THE PAINKILLER SLIPPERY SLOPE
“Women often start using codeine-based
over-the-counter and prescription medications
for issues like chronic headaches, abdominal pain
or chronic menstrual pain,” says Dr Christian
Rowan, an addiction medicine specialist with W
hen Michelle Albert developed chronic
headaches and back pain, she turned to
painkillers with codeine for relief. Soon she
was using them to anaesthetise the stress
and overwhelming demands of being a
super-busy working mum. Her daily dose kept escalating
until she was taking 50 pills a day and suffering serious
drug side-effects that put her life on the line.