People reliant on soft drugs

PEOPLE who abuse commonplace painkillers like Panadol or Solpadeine can be just as addicted as those who take hard drugs, according to an expert in addiction control.

John Donoghue, programme director of the Hanly Centre, an addiction counselling service, said what mattered was the effect of the substance and not the amount or the manner which it was ingested.

“It doesn’t matter whether it is snorted, swallowed or injected,” he said yesterday. “It means the person is not in control of their lives and needs medical attention.”

He was speaking in response to the cry for help on yesterday’s Gerry Ryan show of a woman addicted to Solpadeine.

The woman, referred to only as ‘Mary,’ is married with three children and living in Kerry. She said she had been taking up to eight tablets a day for 11 years.

“I feel like I am hanging on by my fingernails,” she said. “I seem to be angry at everything.”

Mary is also on anti-depressants and suffered severe post natal depression when her youngest child was born. There are no relatives living nearby and, because they moved to Kerry in the recent past, they have no close friends.

Her husband, she says, is not any great help to her. “It goes in one ear and out the other with him. He works hard and thinks that’s all he has to do. He doesn’t take my needs into account.”

Dr Brendan O’Shea, communications chairman of the Irish College of General Practitioners, said commonsense demanded that anyone taking medication for more than two or three weeks should seek medical advice.