Swallow, silence, self-destruction
I felt like a junkie.
At the very end, when the tablets are their only life content, the body even turns off their minds: trembling, with blouse soaked in sweat, Petra Siegert * stands in the pharmacy at that time, her legs as shaky as the lying frame, her everyday life all these years has supported. On the prescription she pushes over the counter, a doctor has prescribed her an anti-inflammatory ointment against swollen ankles, in illegible script, and Petra Siegert has written, as illegibly as possible, under it "Zopiclone N2": a sleep aid, on prescription.
N2, the pack of 20 tablets, that would be enough for the next two days, thinks Petra Siegert, while the pharmacist goes backwards. Tonight she would be sitting on the edge of the bed with ten pills in her cupped hand, and she would swallow all at once. Then she would sleep. Fast, deep, dreamless.
The pharmacist comes back, puts the ointment on the counter and says: "I can not give you the zopiclone." Silence. Now it's over, Petra Siegert shoots it through the head, now you are shown. She rips the fake prescription from the pharmacist's hand, runs out of the door and goes directly to the police. She wants to face herself. The officials look at her in disbelief, they want to send her away. But the 42-year-old refuses to go persistently: "I need the stuff."
She felt like a junkie at that moment, says Petra Siegert today, four years later. But the police are grinning. Because the woman who stands in front of them, does not look like a junkie, but like Petra Siegert, everyone knows in the 6500-inhabitant place. The always cheerful woman, now married in the third marriage, who has always done everything for her three children. At seven o'clock in the morning she sets the breakfast table, does her housework, keeps the apartment in tip-top shape, cooks lunch, has been active as a parent representative for years, has taken her children to the music school and the football club, and always has dinner on time, when her husband comes home from work.
* Name changed by the editor
I was always looking forward to the tablets.
"I have always worked well," says Petra Siegert. "Outwards." She is well rested, powerful, strong. For the others. In between, she gets her tablets secretly. On Monday she goes to Dr. A., on Tuesday to Dr. H., on Wednesday to Dr. K., on Thursday to Dr. B., on Friday to Dr. N. and so on. There are 15 doctors in total, that's enough for three weeks. Then she sits with Dr. A. in the consulting room. No sooner does she complain that she can not sleep, afraid to suffocate, scratch the pens over recipe blocks. All doctors prescribe the remedy. Later, when she gets the pills in one of the local pharmacies, she pushes them out of the blisters, puts them in her pants pocket and throws away the packaging. At home, she drops the pills in the basement into her boots, stuffs them between ironed sheets, opens zippers on sofa cushions, and lifts dried flowers into deco vases to make the pills disappear. And she's always longing for the evenings, when they go to one of her hiding places, take out the pills and finally clear her mind, as simple as the dessert lamp.
Always be strong for others, never show weakness
"I was always looking forward to the tablets," says Petra Siegert. She is dressed as a teenager, a woman with blue eyes and blond hair. She sits on a cream-colored couch in an apartment near Dortmund, in the record shelf are the "Twenty most beautiful Christmas carols" on the dresser photos of her children, all have already moved out of home. The midday sun shines through the balcony windows. "Actually, I was not just looking forward to it," says Petra Siegert, "but I relied on it." The pills have made her happy, as happy as she has ever been in her life, where she always had to be strong for others, but never wanted to be weak herself.
Even as a child, Petra weakness is prohibited.
Even as a child, Petra weakness is prohibited. The father breeds chicks, the mother is a tailor, both are strict. "Gammeln did not exist, do not be sick," Petra recalls. If she complains of a headache, the mother sends her out into the fresh air. Only once is there praise when a young man reaches 19 red roses through the door on Petra's 19th birthday. "Finally a man with style!" Says the mother. A few days earlier, Petra met him in the courtyard of the gymnasium. He offered her gummy bear, she skipped chemistry lessons, two years later they sit in front of the registrar - a baby is on the way.Petra breaks off her medical studies and gets three children in two and a half years. While giving birth to the first in the hospital in pain, the man sits in style in the pub. At night, when the children cry, he does not get up. She married an alcoholic. After seven years they part, but they do not let go of each other.
I felt like a young goddess.
When Petra is long married to another man, rather unhappy than satisfied, and celebrates her youngest son Communion, his father, her former husband, stands in the back of the church. The son walks by, with candle, beautifully dressed. The father looks at him with pride - and Petra suddenly feels a burning sensation in his throat. "Like someone threw a match," she says. At home she takes a painkiller. Exceptionally. You have to hold on, Petra thinks, you have a full house, you can not ruin your child's day. In the evening, the guests are gone, but the burning is still there. Two days later it is unbearable. Several doctors look her in the throat, take blood, reflect the stomach - nothing. Petra gets panic, thinks she has cancer. "I could not drink anymore, could not eat anymore, it did not fit in. I was too," she says. A neurologist finally makes the right diagnosis: severe depression with anxiety.
Finally the diagnosis: severe depression with anxiety
Petra goes to a clinic. Closed station. She hates the tablets the doctors give her. Already as a child she refused cough syrup and sent her own children to the homeopath. But with the antidepressant she feels better, the burning in the throat disappears. "In the past I was an enemy of pills, in the hospital I became her friend," says Petra. When she can not sleep at night after being released, she does not hesitate. Quickly she goes to a friendly doctor. He prescribes her zopiclone. She takes the first tablet. "I had the greatest feeling I've ever had," she says. After ten minutes she falls asleep easily.
Three years Petra comes out with one tablet per day. Every night she goes to bed at nine o'clock. A ritual with a pill. Her second husband does not say anything. "He noticed that I was taking something, but he also realized that it was so much better." It works very well.
But one day the ritual will be broken. The couple is invited to a birthday party. Everyone is urging Petra to stay longer. She is restless. When she finally gets home, she takes two pills. "I felt like a young goddess," she says. From there, she gradually increases her dose, tablet by pill. To keep the beautiful feeling, as she says. And probably also, to cope with the divorce from her second husband, who separates because of another of her. At some point she takes ten pills at once. The friendly physician gives her no more recipes, soon she goes to several practices. A doctor says to her after a few months, "They're taking me to the devil's kitchen." But he prescribes the zopiclone, on private prescription, the health insurance does not get along.
I cheated on everyone. My children, my husband, the doctors, but above all me.
Even her third husband, whom she meets with acquaintances, does not notice. It still works. Sometimes, when she's standing in front of one of her hiding places in the evening, the pills in her hollow hand, she is ashamed of her desire. "I knew: I cheated on everyone, my children, my husband, the doctors, but most of all myself." But she also realizes that she can not stop. And more than once, she hopes not to wake up the next morning. How much she is at the end, she becomes aware only after the failed recipe fake, at the police station. She decides to withdraw. She talks to her husband, he encourages her in it. In a clinic, she reduces the tablets to zero without any problems. She is dismissed abstinently, but without psychotherapy.
Petra finally comes to a clinic for drug addicts
Finally, life seems to mean well with her once. Then the shock: she has cancer. Womb and ovaries are removed. As she walks across the hospital corridors with the IV pole, the anxiety regains. A neurologist prescribes her bromazepam, anxiety remedy and sleep aid at the same time, a benzodiazepine with high dependence potential. "He wanted to help me," says Petra, "but he put me out of it." The addiction comes back. At some point her husband pulls the emergency brake. When they want to buy a living room lamp together and Petra runs sweaty out of business, he decides: "Now you come to a clinic."
This time, the family doctor recommends a clinic that offers independent treatment for drug users. In addition to the withdrawal Petra gets a psychotherapy. Finally she can talk, finally someone is listening to her. She wanders through her past, grappling with her mother's lovelessness. Eventually she knows that she was only there for her children, that she herself fell by the wayside. Being strong also means showing weakness once, asking for help. And that a household does not have to be perfect.
"I'll never do it again," says Petra Siegert today.The 45-year-old looks as secure and determined as the Indian chief in the picture above her couch. He has a horde of tribal brothers behind him. Petra Siegert is also strengthened by her husband. And from her health insurance. The responsible clerk asked in a letter to all the doctors in the region to stop prescribing Petra Siegert to use sleeping pills. The body will no longer be able to surprise their mind so easily.
Scandal: Often physicians promote the drug dependence
According to the latest drug and addiction report of the Federal Ministry of Health, up to 1.9 million people in Germany depend on medication, 70 percent of them women. The most common is the dependence on benzodiazepines: relaxants, sleep or sedatives with these drugs, although their addictive potential is known, are still prescribed by doctors, often too uncritical, too fast, too frequent. Around one million people are estimated to be addicted to these drugs by experts.
Most of them have a "low-dose dependency". That is, they take one to two pills a day for years and do not over-boost the dose. Seeks on prescription, secretly, quietly, which usually does not stand out in everyday life. But even here, it can, if the drug is discontinued, come to severe withdrawal symptoms. For an exit from the addiction professional support and usually a stationary withdrawal are necessary. Highly recommended is a special addiction therapy for women.
Meanwhile, more and more doctors are prescribing alternative Z-drugs, the benzodiazepine-like drugs zopiclone and zolpidem, increasingly on private prescriptions. Their dependency risk was long considered lower. Meanwhile, however, the World Health Organization WHO rates it as high as that of benzodiazepines.
Even after over-the-counter painkillers such as headache pills can be addictive. The analgesic agents contained in the tablets, such as ibuprofen, paracetamol or acetylsalicylic acid, are especially dependent if they are combined with psychoactive substances such as codeine or caffeine (combination analgesics). Although caffeine increases the analgesic effect, it also stimulates. So the stimulus is great to swallow the tablets more often than necessary. The constant use of headache tablets - whether with one active ingredient or with several - can also cause constant headache. As a general rule, painkillers should not be taken for more than three days in a row and not more often than ten days a month without a doctor's prescription.
