An Irish runner who began taking painkillers to help with a knee injury has said he ended up with a codeine addiction so serious he eventually found himself unable to get out of bed.

On The Pat Kenny Show this morning, Newstalk reporter Josh Crosbie spoke to two men who are recovering from serious codeine addictions.

Codeine is an opiate found in many over-the-counter pain medications like Solpadine and Nurofen Plus.

Overuse or misuse of the drug can often lead to dependency and addiction – and there are calls in some quarters for Ireland to follow Australia’s lead in making it prescription-only.

Josh spoke to Noel from Kildare who said he originally started to take Nurofen Plus tablets to help with a sore knee.

“I used to do a lot of running and that was my saviour,” he said. “That was my release because when I would go out for a good run, I would come back and feel like I was totally at ease.

“I was stuck into college work at the time and doing a lot of long-distance running and that. I was doing very well in my life, working away and raising a beautiful daughter.”

He said he began taking the tablets after a friend told him they could “give you an extra kick” and help with the pain while running.

“All of a sudden, I found myself taking four or five tablets going running,” he said. “Six or seven.

“I had a lot of injuries from the running that I was ignoring. I just kept on taking the Nurofen and never knew I would get caught until it got to the stage where I was saying to myself, I’m taking a full pack of these a day.

“I’m waking up and I’m shivering and I’m cold and I’ve got the sweats. I think I’m dependant here.”

Dependency

Noel said he quickly became known around his local town for his dependency and had to get others to buy the tablets for him, or else travel to other towns to pick them up.

“After about five years of it, I couldn’t get out of bed anymore,” he said. “I was just getting by, struggling.

“Something I took just to keep me ticking over with a knee injury, within five years turned into me being bed bound and having a lot of physical issues with my oesophagus and, as you can imagine, bowels.”

He said he eventually suffered a psychotic episode and wound up in a drug treatment centre.

Operation

Josh also spoke to Robbie who said he was seven years clean from drugs when he went into hospital for an operation and was prescribed Tramadol.

Before long he was going through his whole one-month prescription in less than two days.

He found himself going to pharmacies to buy anything that had codeine in it – and eventually, he relapsed back onto other drugs.

“It left me not wanting to come out of addiction,” he said. “It left me wanting to give up.

“I ended up in a hospital, in a wheelchair, soiling myself basically, in the wheelchair.

“I just didn’t want to live but I didn’t want to kill myself at the same time. So, I was just in limbo in the hospital.”

Addiction

Josh also spoke to UCD Professor Colin O Gara, Head of Addiction Services at St John of God Hospital, who told him that codeine “becomes quite a significant opioid with various effects” when you take too much of it.

In addition to their addiction, he said patients can find themselves struggling with liver damage or the erosion of their stomach and small bowel lining.

Noel is now free from products containing codeine but is still on a pathway of recovery.

Robbie now works in a centre helping those who are homeless and sees first-hand the impact over-the-counter drugs can have.

You can listen back here:

If you have been impacted by any of the issues raised int his article, you can contact the HSE’s National Drug Treatment Centre on 01 6488 600.

You can contact the Samaritans 24 hours a day on 116 123.