Coming Clean

One of the biggest medical scandals of our time is the over-prescription of strong pain relief. This heart-rending memoir lifts the lid on the issue, showing the price one woman paid and her fight to recover.

Cathryn Kemp was a successful travel journalist who was struck down by a life-threatening illness. After four years of operations and misdiagnoses 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.

About the Author

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.