How doctors are turning millions of us INTO addicts
By Jerome Burne
Source: Daily Mail
Gina Loxam was feeling a bit low, so she went to see her GP and was prescribed the anti-depressant, Seroxat.
Ten years later, she is still on the drug because the severe mood swings, headaches, fatigue and weight gain she suffers when she tries to come off are unbearable.
Gina, a 52-year-old finance and quality manager, is one of more than 600 people now suing the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline for damages on the grounds that they were not warned of the possible side-effects, such as personality changes, as well as addiction.
'The doctor told me it was not addictive and that's what it said on the information sheet,' says Gina, who lives near Morecambe in Lancashire.
Seroxat now carries the warning that some patients can have problems coming off it.
However, the Seroxat patients are a tiny proportion of the growing number of people addicted to prescription drugs.
It's thought that between three and seven million Britons are affected, with antidepressants, tranquillisers, sleeping pills and pain-killers the main culprits.
A recent report by the United Nations' International Narcotics Control Board predicted that the scale of the problem of addiction to legal drugs will soon overtake addiction to banned substances.
Yet despite this, few patients receive any effective help - meanwhile, millions of pounds are spent helping those addicted to illegal drugs. In fact, the problem of prescription addiction has, for years, been ignored or denied by drug companies and successive governments.
The move to sue GlaxoSmithKline is just one sign of growing pressure for some sort of action. Earlier this year, a House of Commons inquiry into addiction to prescription drugs concluded that action was needed.
FULL STORY
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