Its generic pharmaceutical name is Pregabalin. Although you may know it by one of its brand names: there’s Alzain, Axalid and Lyrica.
It’s a drug that’s prescribed for three very different reasons. As an anticonvulsant used to treat people with epilepsy. It’s also used to alleviate pain. Mostly, however, it’s used to help with anxiety and depression. That’s quite an impressive CV for a single medication. But there’s a problem. In fact, there’s more than one.
Firstly, it’s highly addictive.
When it was originally introduced to the UK market back in 2004, the Pfizer product was heralded as something of a miracle drug; an ideal substitute for the nasty addictive opioids that would go on to cause such horrific problems in the US. These claims, it appears, were somewhat wide of the mark.
Another, even bigger problem, is death. Rising reports of fatalities are starting to seriously worry the British medical community.
A recent Sunday Times investigation found that Pregabalin had the fastest-rising mortality rate of any drug currently prescribed in the UK. It’s now flagged up in a third of all drug-related fatalities. That is a significant and hugely concerning statistic.
Back in 2012, Pregabalin was noted on just nine death certificates in the UK. A decade later, that number had climbed to 779. A shocking 3,400 fatalities have been linked to Pregabalin in the past five years.
https://metro.co.uk/2024/03/03/pregabalin-found-a-third-drug-related-deaths-20388624/
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/an-anxiety-drug-killed-my-son-and-hundreds-more-are-dying-from-it-too-ncpswc02g