Then the hospital told us the U.K has a HUGE problem with opiates, but how can that be when they're impossible to get?
They aren't impossible to get: Paramol contains an opiate, as does co-codamol, Solpadeine Plus, Solpadeine Max, Nurofen Plus, Panadol Ultra, Feminax. All of these products can be bought from a pharmacy.
I even picked up a UCL magazine while I went to go meet the director of my English MA program and the magazine had a big article about drugs at UCL. It listed all the drugs used and not one was an opiate narcotic.
When the hospital mentioned opiate problems, they were probably talking about abuse of over-the-counter opiates, such as the ones I mentioned above. I work in a pharmacy and we get very few college-aged people regularly buying opiates over the counter - most of the regular users are much older. It is estimated that over 30,000 people in the UK are addicted to OTC codeine products... and the majority of those (70%) are ordinary women (working mums, stay-at-home mums, business women etc.). See this article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/real_story/3548406.stmI saw a lot of people browsing pain meds at grocery stores and getting that weak stuff. Go to a chemist and ask for Paramol. Unlike the stuff thats on the counters, it doesn't just have Paracetamol 500mg, but it has 7.5mg of Dihydrocodine...which is almost exactly like the small amounts of oxycontin in American "percocets or vicodins".
Just be careful when advising buying Paramol as the government have tightened sales restrictions in the last few months. Pharmacy staff can't just sell it to anyone: it should only be used as a last resort for acute pain when other painkillers haven't worked. It is illegal for us to sell more than 32 codeine-containing tablets at one time and if we believe a customer is buying them too regularly, we can refuse to sell it to them.
Some might be jerks, but there's an amazing Indian couple at a Chemist on Camden Road toward Murray Street and Carpet right (from the tube). It's called Biotech. They will give you whatever you need. Those codeines are for moderate to severe pain...just below Oxyontin, just in very small doses.
Some pharmacists can seem to be mean about it, but in defense of them, they are just doing their job and selling what they are comfortable with selling. In some cases, they can lose their job and their pharmacist licence if they sell outside the product's licencing laws (i.e. if they sell too much codeine or sell a children's cough medicine for a child under 6).
We asked tons of people and nobody suggested it or knew about it and I watched a ton of people browsing pain meds at grocery stores and getting crappy ibuprofen for 88pence or the plain Paracetamol (which maybe that's all they needed, maybe only had small pain...but who knows? I'm just saying what's 10x better)...the paracetamol without the codeine is crap. It'll relieve pain levels of 3 or below. The Paramol that has codeine in it will relieve pain level of 7 and below.
Well, with all the addiction of codeine present in the UK, the government are trying not to advertise its availability
. Most people don't realise products like Paramol are available to buy unless they have had to buy it for themselves. I suffer with bad migraine-type headaches occasionally, and even though I've been working in the pharmacy on-and-off for 9 years now and have been selling these products for that long, I have never taken anything with codeine in it. I don't want to, in case I react badly to it (my mum can't take it because it makes her dizzy and nauseous) or get unwanted side effects (it can make you light-headed, drowsy and even constipated!)
.
