‘Addictive’ Anti-Anxiety Drug Pregabalin Involved In Fastest Rising Number of Overdoses

Medication displayed on shelves at the Monklands University Hospital in Airdrie, Lanarkshire, Scotland, on March 7, 2022. (Andy Buchanan/WPA Pool/Getty Images)

A medication prescribed to around eight million Brits to treat anxiety, epilepsy, and nerve pain has the fastest rising death toll of any drug in the UK, analysis has shown.

Figures from the Office of National Statistics, examined by the Times of London, pointed to a huge spike in pregabalin-related deaths.

In 2012, the drug was indicated in nine fatalities. By 2022, the number had risen to 779—with almost 3,400 pregabalin-linked deaths in the past five years.

The latest figures echo an investigation by The Epoch Times last year, which looked at drug poisoning statistics for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and revealed the prescription pill has been increasingly listed as either a cause or contributing factor in deaths across the UK.

It is now the fourth most common substance found in drug-related deaths, behind only opiates (such as heroin and morphine), cocaine and benzodiazepines (such as Xanax and Valium).

It was brought to market by Pfizer in 2004 and heralded as a “wonder drug” for the treatment of anxiety because it was claimed to be less addictive than opioids—but evidence increasingly suggests the claims made by the pharmaceutical giant were misleading.

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After Pfizer obtained a second patent, between October 2015—2018, GPs were forced to switch patients from generic pregabalin to Pfizer-branded Lyrica until the patent ran out in July 2017, at a cost to the NHS of £502 million. The global market for pregabalin is worth an estimated $5 billion a year.

In November 2018, the Supreme Court of the UK ruled that Pfizer’s second patent on pregabalin, for treatment of pain, was invalid because of a lack of evidence for the conditions it covered— central and peripheral neuropathic pain.

Sold On The Streets For ‘A Pound A Pill’

In 2019, the government reclassified the substance as a Class C controlled drug after increasing demand for it as a recreational drug, meaning only those with a doctor’s prescription are legally allowed to carry the drug.

The MHRA issued a warning when the drug was reclassified, stating that it “can cause depression of the central nervous system, resulting in drowsiness, sedation, and potentially fatal respiratory depression, particularly if used concomitantly with opioid medicines and alcohol.”

Demand for pregabalin grew by around 6 percent during the lockdown period, according to the 2021 report “Greater Manchester: Testing and Research on Emergent and New Drugs.”

It is believed the drug was increasingly used by addicts in place of heroin when travel restrictions meant there was a lack of opioids in supply. It is reportedly cut with a potent mixture of ingredients cooked up in back-street labs from as far away as China and sold on the streets for as little as a pound a pill.

The ‘Prescription Drug Of Choice’ For Addicts

Labelled as the prescription “drug of choice” for users by outreach workers who spoke to the Manchester report authors, the demand for pregabalin is believed to have grown partly due to its ability to enhance the effects of other drugs, as well as its low cost.

Concerns about the use of addictive prescription drugs have come to the fore since the opioid epidemic in the United States, where highly addictive medications were routinely handed out for pain, causing millions of Americans to become hooked.

Between 1999 and 2021, around 645,000 Americans are believed to have died from an overdose involving an opioid.

In England, in 2023, more than 7 million people were prescribed dependency-forming drugs, defined by Public Health England as those associated with withdrawal symptoms, with prescriptions for many anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications, including pregabalin, on the rise.

The Medicines and Health Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has previously issued a warning to British women who are pregnant or trying to conceive not to take pregabalin after a study done in Scandinavia showed it was associated with a “slightly increased risk” of birth defects.

The regulator gave GPs guidelines not to prescribe the drug to expectant mothers following the study, which showed the most common birth deformities were those affecting the nervous system, eyes, face, urinary system, and genitals.

An investigation by the MHRA found the rate of deformities from pregabalin to be about 5.9 percent for those who took it in their first trimester, compared with about 4.1 percent who did not use the drug or any similar medication.

In 2021, the MHRA said it had reviewed “conflicting” evidence, and its latest guidance says the medication should not be used in pregnancy “unless clearly necessary and only if the benefit to the patient clearly outweighs the potential risk to the foetus.”

Concern about pregabalin follows a series of three damning letters raising concerns on the MHRA by a cross-party group of MPs who accused the regulator of multiple conflicts of interest and of causing “needless deaths” through systematic and widespread negligence over several decades.

Patricia Devlin contributed to this article.