'Painkiller'

When Julie hit the off button on the TV, in the middle of the second episode in the mini-series, she had goosebumps. She had basically watched, uncomfortably, a chapter of her life. She sat on the couch, wide eyed at what she had just seen. She too was addicted to painkillers, once upon a time, and could relate to the characters in the Netflix hit show, ‘Painkiller’!

It brought her right back to when she was fifteen and couldn’t bear to be in anything but a darkened room. Her mother, the angel that she is, fed her mashed potato and creamed rice pudding, because she didn’t need to chew them. Moving her jaw exacerbated the agony she was living with.

When her mother first brought her to the doctor, he gave her Solpadol, as Solpadine wasn’t working. Solpadine had 12mgs of codeine vs Solpadol, which had 30mgs. When the doctor saw her presentation, he knew she needed the extra kick in order to abolish the pain.

As it was the 90’s, the doctor gave her repeat prescription after prescription. Julie felt the difference in strength immediately. She got back to her life, somewhat, and was able to attend school, albeit uncomfortably. She no longer had to spend most of her day in the bathroom, throwing up, as the pain was so severe. Solpadol helped her by taking the edge off her acute headaches. After a while, however, she needed more and more of it to get the same result. That was when her doctor tried her on Tramadol, an opioid she never had needed.

Julie had been cutting herself, the blood that oozed out of the self-inflicted wound feeling like the release she needed in order to get her through the day. Her legs, not unlike the map of a busy train station, were cut to shreds, leaving her with only one option left…her arms!

At age eighteen, her mother came in to wake poor Julie one morning and saw blood on her sheets in the spot she lay with the most resent wound. Panicking, her mother, Suzanne, took her to her councillor, who pointed her in the direction of A&E. She was treated with IV antibiotics first for a bad infection in her right leg, and received seven stitches in her upper left arm.  

She was taken directly from Beaumont to a mental health hospital. Poor Julie was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and depression. After all, wouldn’t you be depressed if you lived the most important years of your life in bed, your only company, your dog Zipper, and not end up depressed?

In the hospital, she was weaned off her pain meds, one every four days, leaving her painkiller free after almost a month. The depression became unspeakably loud, the cutting escalating. Her doctor referred Julie for ECT, (electro convulsive shock therapy)! After two sessions a week, every Tuesday and Friday, for a total of six weeks, the old Julie was back! She enrolled in a PLC course in the hopes of becoming a receptionist, as she had no leaving cert to speak of…the painkillers had robbed her of one!

A few days into the course, however, Julie wasn’t really feeling it. On her lunch break, she would hit four pharmacies one town over to hers, where her course was being held. She then came home and hit up the ones in her home town…all to buy Solpadine!

She recognised she was in trouble when she was downing 24 capsules, plus, in a day, and asked her GP for help. She wasn’t treated as a ‘junkie’, or a ‘pill popper’! She was recommended, however, to reduce her intake immediately, as she was, basically overdosing herself. Her GP, who was in a different practice to the one who started her on Solpadol, was understanding and reassured her that things were going to be ok. Julie tried so hard to do it herself, but with willpower out the window, she ended up in D-Doc where she received eight stitches in her neck, putting her back in hospital.

This time was different, she was under a new psychiatrist. Her original doctor had been given the opportunity to run a whole psych floor in a different hospital.  Although Julie had rapport with him, she was a bit relieved it was a female doctor who replaced him.

At the tender age of twenty-one, the reason for the headaches, the cutting, and the abuse of painkillers, became apparent. Julie openly spoke out, for the first time, about being sexually abused by her grandfather. How her mother didn’t see it was a mystery. No one goes from being happy and healthy one day, to ECT and stitches the next without a valid reason. To her detriment, the bastard died before she received any closure, something that would haunt poor Julie for the rest of her days!

The new psychiatrist put Julie on stronger anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, and Valium, all to aid the emotional baggage she had around her neck for so many years. She also had a three-strike rule, where, if Julie self-harmed more than three times, she would face immediate discharge!

After the inevitable happened, and Julie was sent home, she was told to meet her doctor every day at 8:30 am for a counselling session to see where her head was at. It only took her one week, and a hell of a lot of self-control, to be readmitted. Her psychiatrist promised her that she would eventually grow out of the cutting phase, with counselling, and find new ways to deal with her emotional pain.

Together, the pair came up with the idea of piercings! Whenever Julie felt a strong urge to self-harm, she was offered a day pass to get a piercing. She always went for the toughest in most people’s eyes, the ones that punctured the cartilage. As she had to look after it, so as not to develop an infection, Julie received the external pain she needed, daily, until the gratification she sought was no more…and she went to get another.

It wasn’t an ideal situation, but it was one that worked! Finally, the self-mutilation was under control, and Julie received more ECT. She was hospitalised for four months before she was finally set free. She skipped out of the place, a new tool under her belt!

When she was posted out the next appointment to see a totally different doctor once again, Julie had three months, in which she undid all of her great work. She met with her new doctor in a building on Capel Street in the heart of Dublin. She took to the new psychiatrist, who brought her in immediately, with open arms. Once again it was a woman, a woman who changed all of her medication, keeping her in the high dependency unit for weeks before she was sure Julie was ready for an open ward. During this time, Julie experienced her first bout of psychosis. Dr Smith, loaded her up on old school anti psychotics which dulled Julie's mind for the first time since the abuse started. She kept upping the dose, until Julie couldn’t even think about self-harm, or suicide, or painkillers!

After two years, Dr Smith moved on also, leaving Julie stranded once more. Not for long, however, as her current doctor, the one who inherited her, took the reins and didn’t agree with Dr Smith’s care plan. Dr Coffee thought the anti-psychotics were ruining Julie's life, numbing her from emotion, and tried to wean her off them.

Each admission, she took her off some more, but then had to up them again when another psychosis hit. On her last admission, Julie had to change from the old school meds to a new variant, as her ECG was different to that of her previous admission. Julie agreed under duress, with heart disease prominent in her family, to try the new ones. The change caused yet another psychosis and although Julie is on the other side of it now, she will never fully agree that the new anti-psychotic works as well as the older, more comforting one did.

Now Julie is back on painkillers, as she needs a new knee, one which won’t be granted until she loses thirty kilograms, and, even if she does, she has to wait until she has more years under her belt. She knows she is unable to live without the painkillers once again, and that upsets her!

Watching one and a bit of the series on Netflix solidified her belief that painkillers are ruling her life once more. Even though she is on them for a legitimate reason, something she had the first time she was administered Solpadol, she still panics when it comes near the end of the month and she only has a handful of them left! Is Julie a junkie…no! Is she a pill popper…no! She is just a young lady in pain and thinks that, although there is a warning on the packaging: ‘This substance is addictive’, she will never see a day where she won’t need them in some form or another! Opioids have been offered, but Julie turned them down because of her past. Will they become her future?...we’ll just have to wait and see!!