Painkiller Addict

Cathryn Kemp

• 06 september 2012
• 9780749958060

Samenvatting:

One of the biggest medical scandals of our time is the over-prescription of strong pain relief. This heart-rending memoir lifts the lid on the issue, showing the price one woman paid and her fight to recover.

'I used to think a drug addict was someone who lived on the far edges of society. Wild-eyed, shaven-headed and living in a filthy squat. That was until I become one.'

Cathryn Kemp was a successful travel journalist who fell ill with a life-threatening illness. After four years of painful operations and misdiagnoses she was discharged from hospital with a repeat prescription for fentanyl, a painkiller one hundred times stronger than heroin. Within two years she was taking more than ten times the NHS maximum dosage, all on prescription.

Painkiller Addict is a story of our times, as each year more and more prescriptions are written for strong painkillers or tranquillisers. In this extraordinarily poignant, vivid and honest memoir, Cathryn describes her horrifying descent into addiction and her fight for freedom from the medication which saved her life -- then almost destroyed it. It is a love story, a horror story and one of the bravest survival stories you will ever read.

WINNER OF THE BIG RED READ PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION IN 2013.

Cathryn Kemp was a successful travel journalist who was struck down by a life-threatening illness, pancreatitis. After four years of operations and mis-diagnoses she left hospital with a repeat prescription for fentanyl, a painkiller 100 times stronger than heroin. Within two years she was taking more than ten times the NHS maximum, all on prescription. Her family struggled to understand; her boyfriend left her, she hit rock bottom. Discovering she had only six months to live if she didn't give up the drugs she sold everything she owned and checked into rehab. In the addiction treatment centre she was told that she was unlikely to recover from 'the highest level of opiate-abuse in the clinic's history'. To everyone's amazement, she proved them wrong.

This is an extraordinarily poignant, vivid and honest memoir. Based on the twenty-four diaries that the author kept during this period, we travel with Cathryn through her hospital agony, descend with her into the hell of addiction and cheer her as she pulls herself out and upwards. It is a love story, a horror story, a survival story, and one that shows only too clearly the very real dangers of the over-prescription of painkillers and tranquillisers.

There is also a resource section for sufferers and their loved ones.