How is that possible you might say? These medications are highly regulated by law and can only be obtained via a prescription, written by a doctor and dispensed in a pharmacy by a pharmacist.

No one is to blame, yet everyone is to blame … doctors, pharmacists, the government and consumers.

Misuse of these medications can be deliberate in an effort to gain euphoric effects.

It can be accidental due to a lack of education and understanding of what people are actually taking and what the effects, sometimes serious, can be.

Often, deaths from the misuse of prescription drugs takes place not because of a single medication but by the combined use of medications with alcohol also thrown into the mix.

Medications most often implicated include oxycodone – which is a strong pain killer that goes by the brand names Endone or OxyContin – and benzodiazepines such as diazepam (Valium), which is used for sleep and anxiety.

Often people who have problems with these medications started using them for legitimate reasons.

They were prescribed OxyContin for their lower back pain but discovered that not only did it help relieve their pain, it also made dealing with the stresses of everyday living a lot easier to deal with.

And so they keep taking this medication, even though their pain is better.

Unfortunately, with a medication like oxycodone something called tolerance occurs – this means you need to take more and more of the medication in order to get the same effect.

Before the person realises, they have developed a physical and often psychological dependence on the medication.

This is when things get tricky. People can become desperate to get what they believe that they need and so may resort to deceit and manipulation (often out of character) in order to get it.

Doctors and pharmacists try and do the right thing by a distraught patient and continue supplying them with the medications, often making the problem worse.

The patient shops around to different doctors and pharmacies to get more of the medication, as because of tolerance the old dose is no longer working.

They become caught in a downward spiral of lies and manipulation.

So how do we solve this? The introduction of real-time prescription monitoring, which is set to be released in Victoria in the next 12 months or so, is a start.

But education is also needed. We need education of our health professionals on safe and appropriate prescribing and management of these potentially dangerous medications.

Consumers also need to be better educated about the risks of these medications.

We also need education on how to help a loved one or a patient who may have got into trouble and become dependent on these medications, and education on how to manage someone who has suffered an overdose.

There is a long way to go, but all this is a start. Come and join La Trobe and Scriptwise to discuss this matter at a public forum on campus on Wednesday, May 24.

Pene Wood is a clinical pharmacy lecturer at La Trobe University, Bendigo.