The joyful noise of tearing gift wrap and children’s laughter echoed up the stairs.

However, instead of springing out of bed to join in the festivities, Philly Lay grimaced and reached for another dose of her small white pills.

Originally prescribed to help Philly recover after a grueling spinal surgery, these medications were instead slowly consuming her life.

Now 61, Philly found herself among the estimated half a million Britons ensnared by opioid addiction, consuming up to twenty pills of codeine and other prescription drugs like Tramadol daily.

Before her descent into dependency, fueled by prescriptions from her GP and over-the-counter purchases, Philly was the quintessential “pushy, middle England mum,” enjoying an idyllic life in a village nestled in the Chiltern Hills of South Oxfordshire.

She actively participated in the PTA at her daughters’ prep school, where her now 22 and 24-year-old daughters attended, organized lavish charity events, and led a vibrant social life with her then-husband, Danny.

But in January 2014 her life changed almost overnight after botched spinal surgery left her bedbound, losing the next two years to a painkiller-induced haze.

Three years prior, Philly had undergone a procedure called a scrape to address a prolapsed disc and was told by medics they weren’t totally sure if the results would hold out long term – they didn’t.

When her back ‘went’ for a second time, she was unable to walk or move her left leg and lost control of her bladder.

After being rushed to hospital in an ambulance, she underwent a seven-hour spinal fusion operation – where two discs are fused together using a metal cage, the weft of sensitive nerves and fibrous muscle tissues sliced and resewn.

However, there was an issue administering Philly’s epidural – pain relief injected directly into the spine – and when she was roused from the anaesthetic, she had zero pain relief.

Philly said: ‘My bottom disc was shattered, so they had to pick all the bone out, put the cage in, try and graft my nerves and everything back together, which didn’t work, and they missed my spine with the anaesthetic.

‘Unfortunately, the anaesthetic was in my body, but it just wasn’t in the right place.

‘When they brought me round from this huge operation, I let out an unbelievable scream which will stay with me until the day I die.

‘I can still remember the doctors’ reaction when they brought me round; they said: “We can’t give her more pain relief, it will kill her”.’

The pain was so intense that Philly claims she ‘nearly died’ and was comatose for 24 hours.

Her situation was so grave that her ex-husband was given the devastating warning that she was on the cusp of death.

‘He brought the children in to say goodbye, and when I heard their voices, I came round,’ she recalls.

The trauma of her operation and the subsequent agony kickstarted the darkest period of Philly’s life, during which she also grieved the death of her mother, sister and two of her best friends.

‘I spent the following two years of my life in bed, addicted to opioids, alcohol, taking any pain relief I could get my hands on.

‘I had a whole plethora, including codeine, a morphine drip and morphine patches, which turned me green and made me vomit.

‘I had post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic fatigue, and chronic brain fog.

‘I was so shocked that so quickly I could just become nothing, hiding away from everyone I loved and cared about.’

As her dependence deepened, and near immobile due to the severity of the damage to her back, her weight ballooned and the former dancer’s figure grew from a size 8 to a size 16.

In a drugged-up haze, she grew distant from family life and shunned physical interactions, abandoning the marital bed to sleep alone in a spare room.

Here she spent her days locked away, restless and self-medicating, her tolerance to the fistfuls of drugs she ingested increasing daily.

‘I remember my youngest daughter, who was six at the time, running into my bedroom after school one day and jumping on the bed and I just screamed at her.

‘The way her little face crumbled haunts me to this day.’

That wasn’t the only humiliating encounter she can never forget.

As her former husband’s job often took him away from home, Philly relied on her daughters’ classmates’ mothers for help with school runs—and one found her in bed ‘downing a plethora of painkillers with a bottle of wine at eight o’clock in the morning’.

But nothing makes her recoil more than the memory of missing her youngest daughter’s eleventh birthday. More than a decade later, it still fills her with shame.

She said: ‘I could hear her and her friends downstairs singing happy birthday, and I couldn’t even get out of bed and go and join them.

‘I didn’t want anyone to see me. I felt such unbelievable shame.

‘I’d always hosted really big parties for her and made her spectacular birthday cakes, but that year her dad had to buy her one from a shop.’

Philly, who used her experiences to become a holistic health advocate, hosting podcasts and events under the brand The Wellness Way, decided to quit taking codeine after having a tumour removed from her throat in 2017.

While it’s advised to be detoxed from painkillers by a health professional, she decided to go cold turkey, and if that wasn’t hard enough, she quit sugar on the same day.

She said: ‘Everyone needs to know the dangers of these little pills.’

Codeine is a type of drug known as an opioid, and when it is taken, it is metabolised into morphine, a highly addictive painkiller, from which heroin in derived, by the liver.

Jan Gerber, founder of A-list rehab clinic Paracelus Recovery in Switzerland, told the Daily Mail that this is one of the main reasons why so many people end up hooked.

He said: ‘Codeine is metabolised by the body into morphine, which is a very powerful narcotic and tolerance builds very quickly, often within weeks.’

It’s not just huge amounts of codeine which can be causing havoc with people’s bodies. If people are abusing co-codamol, which is a drug combining codeine and paracetamol, they risk irreversibly destroying their liver.

In his experience, he has seen that codeine addiction often starts with a prescription from a doctor, but when people don’t experience the same effects, or their course of tablets end, they begin ‘doctor shopping’ to get more pills.

And, if this isn’t feasible, they may begin consuming huge amounts of over-the-counter medication such as Nurofen Plus, which contains both codeine and ibuprofen.

Like Philly, 35-year-old Abby Johnson found herself hooked on painkillers after complications from weight loss surgery in 2021 left her needing her gallbladder removed the following year.

To deal with the agonising cramps, she was prescribed codeine phosphate – the purest form of the drug – but when her GP refused to give her more, she began ordering hundreds of pills from online pharmacies.

When they began to run low, she ‘pharmacy hopped’ near her home in Gloucester to buy pack upon pack of over-the-counter painkiller Nurofen Plus, which usually retails at around £10 for a box of 24.

Abby, who has two children aged 10 and 14, estimates she went into £8,000-worth of debt funding her addiction.

She told the Daily Mail: ‘When I had weight loss surgery, I got prescribed a couple of days’ worth by the hospital, and then the doctor gave me 100 tablets, about two weeks’ worth.

‘In the end, before I got clean, I was being prescribed 224 tablets a month but I once finished the whole course in just three days.

‘I was abusing the pills because my tolerance had got so high.’

Codeine is addictive not just because of its analgesic properties but because of its effects on the overall nervous system.

Addicts often describe using the drug as feeling like they are cocooned from real life, or that popping one of the pills simply ‘takes the edge off’ the day.

Jan Gerber explained that the psychological addiction of codeine makes it just as hard to give up as its pain relieving qualities.

He said: ‘It also gives a warm fuzzy feeling, it can really calm you down, improve sleep, or simply help you to fall asleep.

‘It can help lessen anxiety, and especially for people who are very stressed or emotionally in a bad place, that effect is like, “wow, my God, that feels amazing”.

‘That fuzzy feeling then becomes the primary reward rather than killing the pain, and that becomes dangerous.

‘Despite the warnings that codeine can become addictive, the effect can be so strong and such a relief that people tend to repeat that behaviour and go for more.

‘Addiction, tolerance and dependence build quite quickly and within a few weeks, you’re hooked.’

This was the exact scenario that Abby found herself in, admitting that it ‘didn’t take long at all’ for her to get hooked on painkiller induced zen.

‘They make you feel so happy, and that’s what people are getting addicted to, and that’s what I got addicted to,’ she said.

‘They made life a lot easier when I was on them for a period of time, but in the end my addiction nearly ruined my life.’

Abby’s dependence on painkillers totally upended her career as a GP receptionist which she had dedicated decades to building and drove a wedge between her and her friends and family.

‘My mum and I stopped talking. She knew that there was something going on, but she didn’t for one minute think that it was codeine addiction. She just knew that I was poorly all the time.

‘I didn’t see any of my friends. I was very isolated.’

However, Abby was forced to come clean and get clean when she ran out of money and could not afford her next fix.

She immediately contacted a local drug and alcohol service who arranged for her to embark on a course of opioid replacement therapy but after two weeks, on October 12, 2024, she suffered near fatal relapse.

‘I don’t know what possessed me, but I took 28 codeine tablets in one go. I’d had a rough week, and I caved, and I ordered them, and they came and I took them.’

Abby is proud to add that it was the last time she ever took codeine, and she has now been clean over a year.

She celebrated her 12-month anniversary of sobriety with a takeaway and cake, and most importantly, her loved ones by her side.

‘There are so many people out there struggling with painkiller addiction.

‘I have started a TikTok channel sharing my journey and I have 13,000 followers.

‘I say to them, and anyone else who is struggling, do not isolate, try and tell somebody that you trust.

‘There is help out there, and it will be the best thing you ever do for yourself. You’re not stuck in this forever.’

Sadly, not everyone who becomes addicted to codeine has an opportunity to recover, as Diana* from Devon knows too well.

In January of this year, she unknowingly spoke to her son, Ben*, 47, for the final time, just hours before he was placed into an induced coma and died.

While his official cause of death was listed as pneumonia, Diana believes that his long-term addiction to codeine, which started with a prescription from his GP after he hurt his back at work in 2018, was to blame.

A lesser-known effect of codeine is its ability to repress coughing, and up until February 2024 it was a common ingredient in OTC cough syrups.

Diana thinks that this is one of the main reasons why her son, who had moved in with her after the end of a relationship, tragically lost his life.

‘The Friday night he wasn’t feeling well, and on Saturday morning he slept in late which was unusual, but I assumed it was because he had been working nights,’ she told the Daily Mail. 

‘When I eventually saw him, around 11am, I told him that he was going to have to go to hospital.

‘It looked to me like he had sepsis, he was grey and clammy.’

After some pressing, Ben admitted that he had taken Nurofen Plus during the night.

‘I think it masked it. I don’t think he realised how ill he was,’ Diana said.

At her local A&E, Diana informed staff of her son’s addiction to painkillers and they administered Narcan, a drug used to remove opioids from the body.

He was diagnosed with pneumonia on both lungs, and within two hours, he was placed in an induced coma to give his body the best chance to recover. It was too late.

‘That was the last time I spoke to him. He died the early hours of the Monday morning.

‘I’m not blaming anybody and the hospital were absolutely amazing, but I think he didn’t realise how poorly he was, because the codeine was masking all the symptoms.’

Ben, Diana says, could be described as a ‘functioning addict’, but although he was able to hold down a steady job, see friends and go to the gym, at home he would often appear out of it, and ‘struggle to string a sentence together’.

She added: ‘Over the years, my daughter and I confronted him several times to try to find out what he was taking, but we never suspected codeine.

‘He eventually told us that he was taking Nurofen Plus, sometimes eight tablets at a time.’

They persuaded him to contact his GP, who enrolled him on a local drugs and alcohol programme.

Ben attended the scheme for around three years, and Diana says he did have periods of time where he abstained from taking codeine but was always drawn back to it.

He bought the pills from pharmacies and supermarkets across the area after his local pharmacist, concerned for his welfare and frequent purchases, refused to sell them to him anymore.

‘I see it like when people smoke because they enjoy it, even though they know it’s bad for their health,’ said Diana.

‘Ben knew it wasn’t good, and at one point he ended up with a stomach ulcer, but he said it gave him a sense of euphoria.’

Diana, a widow, is now navigating life without her son and wants to raise awareness of the dangers of codeine so other families don’t find themselves in similar, potentially avoidable, situations.

Like the other people the Daily Mail spoke to for this article, she thinks the dangers of codeine are downplayed, and the tablets are treated with a certain level of blasé because they are widely, and easily, available.

She said: ‘Losing my son has been devastating. I don’t think people realise that something you can buy over the counter can have such huge effects.

‘People can become addicted to codeine so easily, and while I don’t think GPs should stop prescribing it, there ought to be so many more warnings about what can happen.’