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Changing perceptions
THE SHIFT
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By Maddie Collins
Rorke Davidson was 21 years old when he lost years of his life to prescription opioid addiction.
The now 25-year-old electrician from Avalon, NSW is one of the many Australians who have fallen prey to prescription opioid addiction.
“Prescription opioids? They’re…. like the devil,” he said.
“I lost a lot of my mid-twenties chasing tablets and if I couldn’t get my hands on that I’d turn to harder drugs to just fill the void that it left in me.”
Rorke was first prescribed prescription opioids, in the form of Endone, for a work related back injury in 2014.
From there, he was prescribed OxyContin, for a skiing accident, which sent him into a downward spiral.
“It all happened quite quickly and then I was doing cocaine with OxyContin and also taking Xanax at the same time, all together.
“It becomes very dangerous like I’ve woken up in hospital many times not knowing why I was there,” he said.
A leading drug and alcohol specialist, from the UNSW School of Community and Public Health, said this mixing of medications is a recipe for disaster.
“In the coroners cases that I’ve been involved in, quite often it is multidrug toxicity, so it’s a number of prescription medicines that on their own may not have been an issue, but together are a toxic cocktail,” said Dr Hester Wilson, who has been involved in a recent coroner’s inquest into prescription opioid overdoses.
Dr Wilson believes too many people have the mentality that prescription opioid addiction will not happen to them.
“The majority of people that do become dependent and start having problems with prescription medications, particularly opioids, are not high risk.
“It can happen to anyone,” she said.
For Rorke, it was almost too easy to get prescription medicine containing opioids.
“You could just complain about a little back pain…I became quite good at it, I knew the signs and symptoms that doctors would look for to prescribe you an Endone or Targin.”
Dr Chris Tremonti, an addiction specialist from Royal Prince Alfred hospital, said around 1 in 10 people who are prescribed medications in hospital will become addicted to them.
“It doesn’t matter whether you’re low socioeconomic or high socioeconomic, all people can be affected by dependence,” Dr Tremonti said.
People with mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression, are more at risk of developing a dependence on prescription drugs, according to the Alcohol and Drug Use Disorders in Australia: Implications of the National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing report.
Rorke suffers from anxiety, and believed that he had quite an addiction prone personality as a result.
Doctors say prescriptions for drugs containing opioids are increasing rapidly and they do not expect that number to decrease anytime soon.
Prescriptions for OxyContin alone have more than doubled from 2010 to 2016, according to the Prescription Drug Abuse – A Timely Update article by The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners.
“We know that there’s still a heavy burden of people taking opioids, being prescribed opioids, and we know the numbers around deaths are still very high,” Dr Tremonti said.
Dr Tremonti believes that medical professionals were not aware of how big the problem was until now.
“We’re only just starting to peel back the layers and saying hang on there’s a lot more to this than we realised.
“Once upon a time people went to the doctor thinking I’ve got this problem and I’m going to get it fixed.
“Nowadays people get on google, people talk to their friends and they think well I need this,” Dr Tremonti said.
“It’s a societal problem and I don’t know if it will ever be fixed. It certainly won’t be fixed in my lifetime.”
Without his support network of family and close friends, Rorke believes he would not be alive today.
“My mother is probably the only reason I’m still alive.
“I lost a lot of friends which I’m only really starting to get back now and I put my family through hell.
“I just can’t imagine if some people out there who were in my situation didn’t have the support network, they obviously wouldn’t go very well,” he said.
Rorke also believes that the problem runs deeper than most people realise, and, while moves like the over the counter ban on codeine are a step in the right direction, there’s still a long way to go.
“There is a demand for it so people are out there to make money from it especially doctors.
“We were actually buying scripts off a dodgy doctor on the northern beaches,” Rorke said.
“It goes pretty deep.”
For Rorke, while he’s now on the road to recovery, his addiction is still affecting him four years later.
“I’m still trying to reconnect my brain to feel again,” he said.
“I wouldn’t really wish it upon anyone to be addicted to them (prescription opioids),”
“I’m a good person but I did a lot of bad things.”
By Taylah Hurst
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