Mary: Problems with multiple medicines (II) – Addiction
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Mary
Female
Age at interview: 66
Number of medicines: 8
Cultural background: Anglo-Australian
Mary became dependent on codeine. She realised that she could not continue taking codeine in hospital, so she stopped taking it and reduced her dependency on her own.
Mary:
Well, when I was on it, I was thinking of all stupid things. To be honest with you, I can't remember them, but some of them were actually violent thoughts, mainly in my dreams, I think. Also I was sometimes edgy, cranky, moody and I wasn't quite sure whether that was the effect or not. I don't know. I've got no idea whether it was or not, because ... I mean, sometimes I'd say to the doctor, ‘Oh, I haven't taken that many’, but in actual fact I did.
I just didn't want to admit it to him, I don't think. You know? Because I used to have ... with the diabetes, I have my organs checked anyway ... my liver, my kidneys and all that sort of thing checked every six months and that all came out really fine, because they used to say, ‘After you take too much codeine, it can affect your liver, or it could affect your kidney’, and every time I got results back, as far as my kidneys and my liver was concerned, it was A-OK. I thought, ‘Oh well, why not? If it's still A-OK, I'll just keep taking it.’ None the wiser, knowing that you get so addicted to it. Now, I can just do without. I don't even take Panadol. As I said, just a Panadol Osteo, but that's in the medication.
Jacqueline:
Mary, you said you didn't really want to admit to your doctor the number of codeine tablets you were taking. What was it that made you feel that way?
Mary:
I think, because the fact is that he used to say it's dangerous for you, if you take too many. You can get addicted to it and I thought, ‘No, well I won't.’ Yeah. I think I realised it when I had the stroke, that I couldn't have it in the hospital, but then what I did do was I have quite a number of tablets still at home, so I would have them at the hospital, but I sort of thought ... I didn't declare that at the hospital. That's how sneaky I was with the medication. But I then realised, nuh, I couldn't get any at the hospital, so I thought, well, I'll just calm it right down and I decided then, just to stop it then and then I threw them in the bin at the hospital. I thought, ‘You've got to wake up to yourself, because you're not going to be able ... ’, because they're not exactly cheap. Not that that worried us, but [husband] didn't even know. So, there you go. None of my family members knew. That was it ... and I thought, ‘Uh-oh! I better get off them.’ So, I did. As I said, it's been now 18 months or maybe just on ... yeah, it was in the hospital that I decided to give it a complete miss, so that would have been two years ago.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.