- The Observer, Sunday September 17 2000
Young women aged 25 to 35 are most likely to suffer over-the-counter (OTC) addiction: 52 per cent of those who admitted addiction were housewives, 27 per cent were one-parent mothers and a further 21 per cent were professionals who often took up to 75 tablets a day over a four- to five-year period.
One-third of the men who admitted dependency were young professionals aged 28 to 35, while 30 per cent were manual workers and 19 per cent were retail staff in the same age range.
Mel Smith, the actor and producer, admitted recently that he nearly died after a seven-year addiction to Nurofen Plus, which left him exhausted, depressed and with two leaking stomach ulcers. At the height of his dependency to the painkiller, taken originally to ease gout, Smith was taking nearly 10 times the maximum dose advised.
'It's frightening how easily I became hooked on a drug freely sold over the counter,' he said. 'I swallowed the pills like Smarties. Swallowing 50 tablets in one day was tantamount to committing suicide: I'm very lucky to be alive.'
The research, to be published in a book next year, was carried out by Over-Count, a self-help group with more than 9,000 people on its books. It was set up by David Grieve, a former policeman who was given 12 months to live in 1992 when his 17-year addiction to the cough mixture Phensydyl landed him in intensive care.
'I had reached the point where I was drinking 25 to 30 bottles of the stuff every day,' he said. 'I had run up £18,000 in debt, had lost my job and spent my weeks travelling around the country trying to find chemists who would still serve me. I sold my son's Christmas presents so I could buy two bottles.'
Grieve began his research in 1997 and was amazed at the extent of the problem. 'Male addicts regularly travel up to 135 miles to buy enough medicine to fuel their addiction,' he said. 'It's an addiction that can hit those who wouldn't consider taking anything harder, which means it affects a wide and as yet completely undefined spectrum of society.'
More than 70 per cent of Over-Count's members are women, most addicted to codeine-based painkillers in tablet form. The men are mainly addicted to codeine-based cough and cold mixtures.
Long misuse of codeine, a highly addictive opiate in the same family as heroin and morphine, will have a depressant effect on the central nervous system and can cause pancreatitis, dependency and respiratory depression.
Grieve questioned 25 pharmacists who listed 21 products, most codeine-based, which they were allowed to sell without prescription, but suspected were frequently abused by customers.
A psychiatrist at an NHS Substance Misuse Clinic in Scotland said the numbers of referrals for over-the-counter drug addictions to his clinic had increased by more than 50 per cent in five years.
'We need to address this problem before events overtake us,' he said. 'More and more prescription drugs are being downrated to OTC availability, and I fear the numbers of patients with an OTC addiction will increase correspondingly unless something is done and unless that happens soon.'
