Book description
Cathryn Kemp was a successful travel journalist who was struck down by
a life-threatening illness. After four years of operations and
mis-diagnoses she left hospital with a repeat prescription for fentanyl,
a painkiller 100 times stronger than heroin. Within two years she was
taking more than ten times the NHS maximum, all on prescription. Her
family struggled to understand; her boyfriend left her, she hit rock
bottom. Discovering she had only six months to live if she didn't give
up the drugs she sold everything she owned and checked into rehab. In
the treatment centre she was told that she was unlikely to recover from
'the highest level of opiate-abuse in the clinic's history'. To
everyone's amazement, she proved them wrong.
This is an extraordinarily poignant, vivid and honest memoir. Based on
the twenty-four diaries that the author kept during this period, we
travel with Cathryn through her hospital agony, descend with her into
the hell of addiction and cheer her as she pulls herself out and
upwards. It is a love story, a horror story, a survival story, and one
that shows only too clearly the very real dangers of the
over-prescription of painkillers and tranquillisers.
There will also be a resource section for sufferers and their loved
ones. Cathryn Kemp is a journalist and travel writer. She was a
journalist for The People
, News of the World
, The Sunday Mirror
and the Mirror
for seven years before falling ill practically overnight in 2004. She
has written several Lonely Planet books, including Romania and
Moldov; Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; Eastern Europe
and Europe on a Shoestring.
