27/02/2017 Inside Out South West

Hello, tonight, cracking down on prescription addiction. The

painkillers that can do more harm than good. Yes, I'm addicted to them

now. They persuade you how to get on with them but they don't persuade

you how to get off them. I just don't like the person I've become.

Also, what is it like going back to work after 30 years? I want my

partner to die proud of me. And love at first squirt for one man

and his eight legged friend. You can tell she's interested but not at all

worried! Hello, welcome to Inside Out with

investigations from where you live. First tonight, we look into how

doctors in the south-west are trying to avert a public health disaster.

The number of prescriptions for some of the strongest and most dangerous

drugs have soared, but what is being done to help people come often?

Every morning, 27-year-old Isabel starts her day the same way. I have

seven, eight years, probably longer. seven, eight years, probably longer.

And I've been in and out of hospital forever, it seems. Her condition has

proved difficult to diagnose, but for the pain, she's been prescribed

a strong drug. Oxycodone. At first I thought they were fantastic. I

thought they would be able to help. But two years on and her

quality-of-life is at rock bottom. I can't work because I'm constantly

phoning in sick. You just sit and stare at walls. Nothing is there.

You've got no sort of emotion or... Anything. It's scary. Over the next

two months, Isabel hopes to quit the painkillers that have cut her off

emotionally from her husband, Steve, and their children. I just don't

like the person I've become. I'm really determined and I'm determined

to be off them so I can be with the kids. What will they see when you

are off the tablets? Who will they see? They will see their mum. A

Mondays missed out on. Isabel's painkillers are opiates. There are

many different types either synthetically made or derived from

the opium poppy plant, as is heroin. Traditionally, they've been used to

treat cancer or tissue pain, for example, after an operation. But

after the last 20 years, prescriptions for these have risen

dramatically. Now doctors believe they are not very effective

long-term pain and can even make it worse. The trouble is, over time,

patients can become dependent, or in the worst addicted.

Could you stop them tomorrow if you Could you stop them tomorrow if you

wanted to? No. I couldn't just stop them. So, yes, I'm addicted to them

now. They persuade you to get on them but they don't persuade you

hard enough to get off them. But that is changing. Today Isabel has

come to her local pain clinic, where they are trialling a new approach.

So this is a new contract we've been developing to help people understand

about the benefits and the risks of taking opiate medication. Consultant

psychiatrist Adrian Flynn and his colleagues have developed a sort of

road map to coming off the drugs. It will soon be rolled out across the

county. It contains a contract to be signed between patient and GP. The

contract itself enables you and your GP to work together to judge whether

or not the medicines you are taking are having the desired effect, or

whether any of the side-effects or problems we know can happen with the

medications starting to creep in. I've been having the sweats and I'm

getting quite frustrated and angry easily. The contract isn't legally

binding but it is a written commitment. Not all patients are

willing to reduce their medication. I think sometimes there's some

conflict between the patient and health care system because health

hasn't given them the answers they wanted. So were we turn around and

say, the thing you rely on most may be making it worse, that's a really

difficult conversation to have. The patient contract was developed after

clinicians noticed a small group of patients with long-term pain kept

being admitted into the Royal Cornwall Hospital. What we noticed

was that the amount of opioid used intravenously on one particular ward

was 20 times higher than it would have been on comparable wards. The

the drugs, they no longer worked. In the drugs, they no longer worked. In

fact, they made the pain worse. Many of the patients with long-term

painful conditions were describing painful conditions were describing

the same kind of features in how they presented and how their lives

were as I had seen when working in a drug addiction service. And that was

a real concern. Jay has repeatedly end up in

hospital because of his painkillers. He suffers with chronic pain after

breaking his back 25 years ago. Without the drugs, I would be in bed

24 hours a day and I would be in so much pain I would be rolling around

the bed crying. Over the years, he has been prescribed a higher and

higher dose. Now it is dangerously high. I would look at the positives

that it does not the Ned -- the negatives, to be fair. But the

negatives have nearly killed him. The medication built up and made me

unconscious, so when the carers came in on occasion, they couldn't wake

me, they couldn't talk to me. The next thing I remember was being

woken up in hospital after they had put the reversing drug in to what

the opiates had done. And basically when I've had too much opiate. Does

that scare you? It doesn't scare me any more because I know it's part of

my pain relief. But what if no one found you? If no one found me,

then... The chances are, I could be dead. His GP is Doctor Tamsin

Anderson. She has called him in for an appointment and there's going to

be some tough talk. Ultimately I have a prescribing responsibility

for the medication I give him, and so I will be having a conversation

that says I do not want to continue to prescribe this drug at this level

to him. I don't think it's safe and the responsibility lies with me, so

at the end of the day, it's up to me to say no.

Thank you for coming in to see me today, Jay. I wanted to talk to you

about your medication again. The medication? Yes. It leads to pain.

But what we are actually saying is, you are still in pain, aren't you?

In spite of the medication. The real concern is the fact that I know what

it's going to be like. When all my medication is taken away. There's no

way I can survive. We'll take it at your pace. But I am going to keep

encouraging you down. And you know I drive a tough bargain! OK? But we'll

work on it together. I trust you, so I'll give it a go. Thank you, Jay.

Thank you very much. Jay doesn't sign on the dotted line but he does

take the contract away with him. It has been six weeks since Isabel

started her withdrawal and she's doing well.

I started reducing my tablets. It's becoming quite hard. I'm feeling

very anxious, sweaty. The past week, I would say, I've got a lot better.

I feel better in myself. I feel more happy. Coming off the tablets has

made me obviously think more about what I need to do in life and be

able to spend more time with the kids. And she's in less pain.

Hi, Isabel, Steve. How are you? How are you doing? Really good, thanks.

Philly of the medication. So no turning back? Absolutely not. I'd

never go back to them. I'm a lot happier now I'm off them.

For Jay, it's going to be a much longer journey. So, how has gone?

Yeah, all right. But there's still a lot of questions. I still feel that

they are the better option for me. And I promised to give it ago so I

will. And with the help of his doctor, he has started to cut back

on the opioids. I've signed the contract and for the years I've been

on them, it is going to take a hell of a long time to come off them.

Cornwall is now reviewing a number of patients on high doses of

painkillers. For his part, Jay has already made a brave decision and

one that might save him his life. New research shows the octopus may

well be far more intelligent than scientists previously thought. One

person who has always believed that is Plymouth marine biologist Alex

Harvey. So when we told her we had found some amazing octopus action

off the south-west coast, she just had to investigate.

My name is Alex Harvey and I work for the marine biological

association. I love my job because I get to come out here and work with

the most amazing creatures, no matter whatever the weather.

While I'm fascinated by all our native sea life, I do have a

particular favourite. An animal so unlike us that it's almost alien.

Eight legs, three hearts and, in my view, a massive personality.

Yes, it's the octopus. I just love them. Today we are out on Plymouth

Sound hoping to catch some native specimens.

We've had some success so now it's time to get these guys back to the

lab. Monitoring our sea life helps us

understand what is happening to our seas. The octopus we usually see off

the south coast is the curled octopus, and while many species of

sea life are struggling, with rising sea temperatures, the octopus is

thriving. We want to understand why. What we

see straightaway is an increase in feeding and growth when the

temperature is just a degree or two higher. This makes sense because

they are fast-growing but cold-blooded animals so any increase

in temperature will automatically result in an increase in metabolism.

What we want to find out is what behaviour changes they make to deal

going to hunt or switch to a more going to hunt or switch to a more

calorific parade? This is a relative of the octopus.

The cuttlefish. These babies are just five centimetres but they can

grow up to 65 centimetres long. It is feeding time for these

cuttlefish. I've trained them to take small pieces of fish, so I'm

moving the fish around to grab their attention. Normally they only attack

moving prey. That's how they recognise it is food. Cuttlefish are

absolutely voracious predators. They hunt pretty much all the time. And

as well as their tentacles, they've got this amazing beak, almost like

that of a parrot, in two parts. They use that to inject a neurotoxin into

their prey which kills them in seconds.

I could watch them all day! But what I'm really interested in is the

octopus in its natural habitat. In Dorset, there's a man I very much

want to meet. Local diver Colin Garrett has regularly seen at least

one octopus of the 80 mile spit at this beach. What's more, on his

night dives, when the octopus is mode -- most active, he has filmed

it. Colin has been diving and filming in

these waters most of his life, yet he had never seen an octopus, let

alone managed to film one. Until now. As you can see, initially it

wants to swim away but then it settles down with our presence

there. This footage is amazing. How did you get it? Friend of mine had

reported seeing an octopus and we went diving a few days after that at

night. And unbelievably, we came across the same octopus. How can you

tell it was the same one? My partner named him Hank, he has one are

missing, so he's quite easy to identify! You can really see his

missing arm. And you saw him in every place -- the same place every

night? Thereabouts. We would go to the same place and within a few

minutes we would find him. That's really interesting because we don't

know much about territoriality with octopus. We do think they have a

home area that they patrol but there's almost no way of gauging

this in the wild, unfortunately, unless you are as fortunate as you

and get to film them at night. This is really valuable for us. There you

go. Not bothered by our presence at all. Not at all. Especially to feed

like that. That's great. That's wonderful.

We've just seen him feed there. That's quite rare to film in the

wild because these are quite shy animals, so to capture that on film

is absolutely amazing. And Colin's remarkable video shows

more about this shy creature. This is wonderful because you can even

see the Ridder falls under here. These ourselves which reflect light,

creating an iridescent blow that can distract predators. If they are

swimming in the sea and they are viewed from underneath, the cells

will block out their silhouette so they become almost invisible. This

is really wonderful. Wonderful footage. And all of this, Alex, is

filmed just out here in the Bay. That's brilliant. Incredible to

think that we have native octopus patrolling the sea bed just off the

beach. As most of us will never see one in the wild, I've come to the

sea life centre in Weymouth to meet a particularly friendly octopus that

will soon be on show to the public. Luckily, I get to go behind the

scenes. Meeting me is chief octopus Wrangler Phil. In the heart of the

building are the tanks where he looks after the octopus. How long

have you had them for? Just over eight months. Like me, Phil has

found each octopus has its own distinct personality and his newest

one is very friendly. So this is one of my newest arrivals. He's very

grabby! Especially for such a young octopus. It normally takes a couple

of months to build up this sort of of months to build up this sort of

trust between a keeper and an octopus. But she loves it! Not

worried about holding on. Or throwing lots of water at us! As you

can see! What is it that you love about them? Is a wild animal, you

expect them to run away when they see you, but they are just so

loving. So it's just love at first sight, almost. You put a finger in

and they just grab you. She clearly knows you! Do you find

they have individual personalities? Absolutely. Previous ones I've had

will come up every so often or just for food. This girl likes to squirt

all of the time. If I try and leave her alone, as I've done after

playtime, she tends to squirt till I come back, so I can be here for a

good 20, 30 minutes till she's happy. And then I can leave her. You

can see by her colour at the moment that she is quite interested in what

we're doing. If she was worried or scared, she would be a dark colour,

like dark red or even close to black. But with the colours going on

at the moment, you can tell she's interested but not at all worried.

Hey! She's absolutely amazing and it really goes to show the range of

personalities that naturally occur in a species like this. Personality

is something we think of as being distinctly human but research is

starting to show animals such as octopus and cuttlefish, and even

sharks, they have distinct personalities we can test and see

throughout their lifetimes. Leaving Phil and his octopus behind,

it's time for me to return the specimens we caught in Plymouth

Sound. Octopus is only live a couple of

years so it's time for us to return these back to sea. We will try to

put them back in exactly the same location we found them. So, time to

go, guys. I feel very privileged to work with

these beguiling creatures, and I hope I've given you just a glimpse

of why I find these small animals with very big personalities so

fascinating. It can be tough going back to work

after a career break, but what if that break was for 30 years? We've

been following one Devon man who is determined to rejoin the world of

employment after decades on benefits.

By anyone's standards, John Clarke has had a colourful life. I was a

really nasty person. Nasty, dangerous criminal that would hurt

and destroy anything and anyone to get what I wanted. Most of my time

was spent doing criminal activities to fund my drug habit. But he is now

clean, and after three jobless decades, he wants to work. My mum's

going to die knowing that I got it right. I want her to die proud of

me. But after so long out of the system, it's not going to be easy.

Hi, hello? This is Lucy... So he needs help. This council backed

course could be the answer. A huge challenge, because you are stepping

way out of your comfort zone. We'll have anxieties about meeting new

people, possibly, but when you are worried they will judge you, you

won't have the communication skills, those are big barriers. -- we all

have anxieties. Lizzy set up this course to help increase

people'sconfidence and self belief. If you've been on the streets for a

while, if you had addiction, it can be fairly difficult after years of a

fairly chaotic lifestyle to get your head around catching buses and being

in a place at a certain time. Always been an addict. I no longer an

addict but I still feel that, they are the people in the workplace, and

I feel awkward stepping into that, because I'm stepping from one world

into another. Jon's friend Ali Chatman is also job-hunting. If Jon

takes a job and it doesn't work out, he could be left with less money

than before. It scares me to let go of my benefits because that's what I

survive on, to then step into a world where somebody could say, we

no longer want you, you're not good enough. I'm worried that would

absolutely crush me. John and Al have been honing their work skills

as volunteers, helping other recovering addicts. The biggest

anxiety people have is, are they going to be able to do it? Can they

meet the hours? Are they going to be strong enough? Are they going to be

the person the employer expects them to be? So the main thing for

interview preparation is what? What is the main thing we need to do?

Research the role, guessed? Today the job-seekers are learning how to

mail an interview with help from formal Royal Marine and motivational

coach Worley Gibson. John, what I want you to do is stand behind

Melissa. Use this example with a handshake. How long does it take to

make a first impression? Does anybody know? It takes nine seconds.

Hi, how are you doing? Five seconds. It takes nine seconds to make a

first impression. Half of that is gone with a handshake. In any job

search, interview skills are key. But there's room for a bit of

creativity, too. Made in a few hours, this is. Do you like it? I

do! The group's main challenge is something everyone hates - public

speaking. Most people just don't like it because they don't like

being the focus of attention. Most people want to be the grey man and

we are showing these guys they are a lot better than that man and they

can come out of that comfort zone. A little bit nervous but looking

forward to it, actually. Thank you so much to everybody here. I'm going

to hand you over to rob now. I'm going to get these guys to talk

about it themselves, so without further ado, I'll get everyone to

introduce themselves. Hi, I'm Colin, I'm from Exmouth. I was homeless for

a while. We measure our success is as to whether we achieve our goals.

We are all going to get discriminated against at some point

in our lives. It can happen because of sex, race, gender, even

addiction. They absolutely nailed it. Absolutely superb, everyone of

them. It's two weeks into the job search

and Al has been hired as a support worker for vulnerable adults. Hello,

good to see you. And you. I'll stick the kettle on. She really deserves

it because she's really good at what she does and she is an amazing,

lively person, so it was really good to see. I was chuffed. A few weeks

later, and John gets his chance. When I went on that course, the next

interview I went to, I wasn't scared. Just not being scared made

such a difference in my interview because I was much more confident.

So for the first time in 30 years, he's clocking on. I'm really

nervous. It's quite a responsibility. But I'm also looking

forward to it. So mixed emotions. But John hasn't chosen an easy gig.

He'll be helping to manage a homeless shelter. For John coming in

here tonight, is going to be a challenge. There's a multitude of

issues from drugs, alcohol, mental health issues, and people are in a

bad way, so it's a really complicated environment with all

those challenges wrapped into one. John needs to keep everyone is safe

and provide support to those who need it. What about the dog? She can

go in as well? Have you had anything to eat today at all? John is hoping

to use what he's learned in the past to help give these guys a future.

You need to go home where you're safe. Right? This is not your world.

I've been in here and I'm out of it now and it hasn't changed. You've

got a good life. Don't get involved with this one. Years ago it was me

here as a client, and, you know, it's nice to be on the other side

and have that experience and also it just reminds me how far I've come.

Stay Out Of Jail card! Even when things are going smoothly, John is

always on alert. Not kicking you out but what I'm saying is I can do.

Take it outside. Take it up the road, all right? John feels he's

putting his past behind him. The tattooed they are going over is one

I had done in my bad days. It was done by a heroin addict.

No one can actually say to me I'm a bum any more. I feel I can hold my

head up and I have my money that I get that I earn. Brilliant. Your

amazing! Back at the shelter, Lizzie has come to see how John is getting

on. I am so proud of you, genuinely, genuinely proud. Thank you. You gave

us the opportunity to do certain courses and that all worked towards

that, so that worked. The living experience has helped me get the job

that I've got. Brilliant. I've taken something that was a real bad

negative into a positive. And I try to tell the people I work with that

it's doable. You can get out of that life, as hard as it looks.

Next week, the fishermen on drugs and out in the English Channel. The

job is dangerous enough as it is. Why make it far worse? That's next

Monday at 7:30pm. See you then.

Hello, I'm Riz Lateef with your 90-second update.

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