Doctors say people are abusing drugs such as painkillers and sleeping tablets, and many have secondary addictions.
For years, drug addiction in Ireland was associated with heroin. Many of the available drug services are focused on methadone treatment for heroin users.
But medical professionals say the addiction picture has become more complicated in recent years, with more people abusing drugs such as painkillers or sleeping tablets and having associated “process addictions” such as gambling or exercising.
The internet has become a portal for accessing drugs, according to Dr Colin O’Gara, head of the addictions unit at St John of God Hospital, a private treatment facility in Dublin.
He has seen a rise in over-the-counter codeine addiction, and while younger people tend to take more excessive amounts of it, the problem extends to all age brackets.
“I’ve treated people in their 70s and 80s who didn’t realise, until they ran into significant difficulty, that they had a problem with taking excessive codeine,” he says. Those difficulties include stomach problems and other side effects.
Source: Erin McGuire, The Irish Times, 12/05/15
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