Readers' blog: My sister has been addicted to prescription pain medication for the last seven years

My sister has been addicted to prescription pain medication for the last seven years.

A bright PhD student who earned €160k a year for a large company.

Unfortunately she suffered an accident which resulted in spinal surgeries.

This is when our nightmare began, rather than deal with her issues we noticed that her doctors gave pain medication and sleeping tablets.

Two doctors prescribed the same tablets without communicating with one another.

Addiction had gotten it's claws into her and has continued to suck the life out of her.

My lovely sister is now a recluse in my parents house, 16 Xanax, 6 sleeping tablets, morphine patches the list is endless, she pops paracetamol like they are tablets.

So much for the government only allowing you to buy 12 tablets at a time, she is given tubs of them by her doctor.

My sister has become a master manipulator she travels around different doctors in her quest to get her fix. The worrying thing is only one out of her 10 doctors she attended realised she was an addict.

My parents are powerless. You can't report these doctors unless you submit a complaint to the General Medical Council but this is a long drawn out process which costs time and money both of which we don't have.

In the meantime my sister is sleeping albeit with the assistance of all her pills up to 14 hours a day, her looks are ravaged and her teeth are rotting all whilst her GP continues to prescribe her 16 Xanax, 6 Benzodiazepines etc a day.

We too have tried to get help but you need to be clean for a month before they accept you...

The lost and helpless family of a prescription medication addict.

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