Despite the world’s insistence on kale enemas being the cure-all for everything from colds to cancer, some illnesses require carefully manufactured pharmaceuticals for a cure, & even then sometimes there is no cure & we can only treat the symptoms. There is a plethora of such illnesses, & as of writing I live with at least 3 of them; asthma, depression, & chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis. Depending on the outcome of my impending surgery, I could be adding another to the list – endometriosis (note: I now live with 4, because having just 3 was boring).
All of these illnesses are chronic. For the most part their causes are unknown, making it impossible to cure them. Instead, all we can do is treat the symptoms for as long as they persist, & the word chronic should give you an indication that the symptoms last longer than a couple of weeks. Yet, as fellow sufferers of such conditions will all tell you, we are constantly being reminded by our doctors that the pain killers & symptom managers we rely upon to function are only meant to be used for 6 months, or at most a year.
You don’t need to be a doctor to know that chronic illnesses don’t have the good manners to abruptly stop without warning after 6 months of using a prescribed medicine. However, at this point we start to be pressured by medical professionals to stop using medicines, without alternatives being offered. We are faced with a choice; subject ourselves to debilitating symptoms, or insist on keeping our prescription & be labelled as dependent on drugs. As far as most doctors are concerned, this is no different to being a drug addict, living from one high to the next, consumed by the need to remain intoxicated. Very few of them seem to fathom that our dependency stems from the desire not to be in excruciating pain.
My prescriptions keep me alive; they mean I can breathe. On top of that, they dull the pain enough to allow me to move. They meant I got an education, a full-time job, a husband. They mean I can write blog posts & make videos, join protests & watch wrestling, socialise & play games. Even with them I remain in constant pain.
Back in early 2019, shortly before we were scheduled to leave the EU for the first time, my main prescription disappeared. No one would supply it. I argued with the doctors & pharmacy daily, watching the number of pills left dwindle day by day for an entire month. Eventually, just before I ran out, the supply returned, but for an entire month I had lived in constant fear. If they ran out, how would I work? If I couldn’t work, how would I pay the rent? If I couldn’t pay the rent, where would we live? Even scarier than the financial aspect was the knowledge that I would be in unbearable pain.
In the current unstable political climate of the UK, & who knows what madness will have taken place by the time this post is published, that fear has returned as the supply of my medicine falls into question. It made me realise just how dependent on these prescriptions I had become.
Dependent though I may be, addict I am not. Addiction is an entirely separate physiological & psychological dependency on drugs, often obtained illegally or for recreation in the first place, which still needs to be treated with far more compassion & understanding than it is given now. The stigmas & stereotypes that haunt addiction also haunt me, & that is what I despise. Chronic illnesses & drug addictions are two separate conditions, in need of different treatment options. To lump us all into one category & regard us all as lazy strays draining “the system” of money damages us all.
When all of this is said & done, there is one fact left to face. If we’re being honest, the pressure to get chronic illness patients to stop using prescriptions is to save money for the NHS, not for our own good as they like to tell us. What good is not being addicted to drugs if we’re in unrelenting misery instead, which ironically is something that drives people to use illicit drugs. While the NHS certainly does need more funding, jeopardising the health of patients goes against everything it was set up to do.
So, when you see scare-mongering on the news about people becoming dependent on prescriptions, just remember that there is an entire side of the debate supressed into silence. We are not drug addicts. We are just sick.
