Painkillers: 'Buying online fuelled ruinous addiction'

A woman has described how easy access to drugs on the internet fuelled an addiction that started with a period pain prescription when she was just 19.

Sara Speakes, from Pembrokeshire, bought tablets online before eventually having a stroke at 47.

She said she was "drugged up to the eyeballs" on opiates and benzodiazepines.

A charity said so-called "benzos" are behind a "significant rise" in drugs deaths in Wales.

Sara's addiction started with painkillers, prescribed by her GP to help her cope with period pain.

Over time, she needed more and more to feel the effects and in desperation turned to unregistered pharmacies on the internet.

"It got really bad," said Sara, from Pembroke Dock. "Where a doctor might prescribe two painkillers, I would take six or eight in one dose, three or four times a day."

Sara told her doctor she was afraid she might be addicted.

To help reduce her dependency on codeine she said the doctor prescribed diazepam, from a class of psychoactive drugs called benzodiazepines, most often used to treat severe anxiety.

"I would just increase and increase to get that high every single time," she said. "You can take it for so long and then your body's used to it. So I would be taking silly amounts."

When she started to run out of pills in between prescriptions, she would register at different GP practices, or claim that she had lost her tablets on holiday.

At one point she even began to take her boyfriend's mother's medication.

"I would take five or six diazepam, five or six zopiclone, 21 antihistamines," she said. "I just wasn't with it because I was totally drugged up to the eyeballs."

Eventually, Sara turned to the internet. A quick Google search is all it took for her to find tablets.

The sites she came across had words like "pharmacy" in the title, with false Trustpilot reviews and "FDA Approved" stamps to fool her into thinking they were legitimate.

But many of these websites are unregistered pharmacies selling fake, dangerous and illegal drugs. The sites do not place restrictions on the number of tablets you can buy at once.

If you have been affected by the issues raised in this report, details of organisations offering information and support on addiction, substance misuse and mental health are available via the BBC Action Line.

Sara describes them as "like a sweet shop" where she spent "hundreds and hundreds of pounds".

Wales' drug testing service, Wedinos (Welsh Emerging Drugs and Identification of Novel Substances), said it was concerned about a spike in fake versions of the drug sold online.

Many of the tablets on these "illicit" sites are "not of pharmaceutical grade", it said, and can contain different drugs in unknown doses.

"The risk of adverse effects, development of dependency, hospitalisation or death are increased, particularly when alcohol and other drugs are taken alongside or within a short period," the charity said.

Things became so bad for Sara, her eldest son, a teenager, decided to leave home.

"I functioned as normally as a mum as much as I could, I was heavily involved in their education as much as I could," Sara told BBC Radio Wales.

"My addiction got worse to the point where I couldn't look after them," she added.

"[My eldest son] came to me one day and he said, 'Mum, I'm going to go and stay with family because I've got to concentrate on my exams'. And I suppose that was the bit that just broke me."

The day he left, she decided to quit the pills. But it was too late.

Days later she was found unconscious after having a double stroke.

Sara was in hospital for six weeks and almost died.

"I know there was a phone call one night to say 'you need to come in, Sara's not going to make it through the night'," she said.

"But after about five weeks, I started to wake up - and there was something in me that wasn't going to give up.

"I was told I was very, very lucky to survive, they'd been told I probably wouldn't survive, there was something in me that made me fight."

Sara said she had not taken benzodiazepines or opiate painkillers since her stroke in May.

She is trying to rebuild her life, reconnecting with her children and volunteering with Dyfed Drug and Alcohol Service.

She has worked with the charity to create "Sara's soothing bags", which are full of distractions and small comforts for others going through withdrawal.

"Will I ever forgive myself?" she asked. "Probably not.

"It's learning to live with that," she explained. "So my apology to the children in a way was 'I'll fight this and then I'm going to show you that I'm going to do some good work now and try and stop this happening again', because I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy."

But there are many more people turning, like Sara did, to online sites selling drugs.

According to Wedinos, benzodiazepines accounted for the majority of illicit drugs seized in Wales and England in 2019-20 - more than 719,000 doses.

That is a 200% increase on the year before, and 84% of them were seized in Wales.

After testing pills sold as diazepam, one of the drugs prescribed to Sara, Wedinos found 55% of them were fake.

These fake benzodiazepines are behind a sharp rise in deaths across Wales and England, from a few a year at the start of the decade to 62 in 2020.

Rob Barker-Williams, from the drugs charity Barod, said: "From 2019 to 2020 we saw a 155% increase in diazepam-related deaths in Wales."

Benzodiazepines are also being implicated in drug-related deaths associated with heroin or methadone because of people taking multiple different drugs at once.

Mr Barker-Williams said: "Looking at other countries such as Scotland, they have seen such a significant rise in drug-related deaths related to benzodiazepines. We seem to be starting on that curve, which is a significant worry."

Dr David Bailey, BMA Cymru Wales chairman, said: "Whilst benzodiazepines were initially deemed a relatively safe and effective treatment for anxiety, over the years they proved to have a marked addictive effect.

He said family doctors have "significantly cut back" on prescribing benzodiazepines. National guidance now stipulates the drug should be used for short periods only.

"We're very concerned to hear about patients obtaining medication online without consultation from a medical professional," he said. "This is potentially very dangerous, and we would always urge patients to speak to their GP before taking new medication or modifying their current dosage."

But Dr Bailey said pressure on the NHS means there are "limited dedicated resources to support patients with addiction and withdrawal.

"The BMA would like to see a national 24-hour helpline set up specifically for patients with prescription dependence as well as the introduction of national guidelines for the tapering and withdrawal of medication with addictive side effects."