Michael's mother Lisa (pictured centre) is pushing to have fentanyl patches removed from public availability. Photo / Supplied
Michael Clayton was just 21 years old when he lost his life after using a "pain relief" patch.
He was experiencing sore muscles after a gym session when a personal trainer advised him to wear a fentanyl patch.
Michael applied the patch before he went to bed and was found unconscious the next morning by his girlfriend. He was rushed to the hospital and died within a month.
Lisa Clayton lost her son in April 2015 and Jessica lost her big brother.
Lisa said the pain still felt like a "wrecking ball slamming through your life".
"Every day we miss him. Every day we think about him," Lisa told news.com.au.
"Anything in our lives, happy or sad, is not shared with Michael.
"We know he is with us every day but it's not the same, and every happy occasion is always a sad event because he is not here, standing by our side."
The heartbroken Queensland mother is now calling on the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) to remove the pharmaceutical drug from public availability.
She can't understand how a drug so strong can still be prescribed by doctors, four years after the sudden death of her fit and healthy son.
"I don't want any other family to go through what we have gone through and suffer a lifetime of grief," Lisa said.
"It's not something I would wish upon anybody. It can also be easily prevented if doctors weren't given the authority to prescribe a drug so strong."
Lisa said her 10-year-old daughter Jessica has been especially affected by the loss of her older brother.
"Nothing is ever the same. Every day my daughter Jessica, who is now 10, is still heartbroken. This is the reality, the aftermath of this dangerous drug," Lisa told the Courier-Mail.
"All it would have taken was the removal of the patch. But he didn't know, he thought it was just something to relieve his pain."
The Gold Coast mum said her son didn't know anything about the fentanyl patch and it was the first time he had ever used it.
"It affected him pretty quickly. It was about 9 pm (about half an hour after applying it) that he sent a message to his personal trainer saying he was burning up and felt he was on fire," Lisa said.
"His trainer responded saying, 'Everyone gets different side effects' and to sleep it off."
Michael didn't wake up the next morning. He died from a lack of oxygen to his brain.
"I just want everybody to be aware of the dangers of this drug — you never know if you're going to wake up the next day, so please don't play with it all," Lisa said.
The Gold Coast fitness instructor who provided Michael with the fentanyl patch pleaded guilty to supplying a dangerous drug and being in possession of steroids and fentanyl.
He avoided jail time and was sentenced to two-and-a-half years probation.
OTHER FENTANYL OVERDOSE CASES
Michael is not the first person to overdose on fentanyl.
In 2008, a US bodybuilder named Erik 'The Viking" Fromm took a lethal dose of the drug to control pain in his lower back.
Fromm, 36, was a former top-10 competitor among amateur super-heavyweights and was once ranked second in the US.
But he was injured in a traffic accident in 2007 and to get back on top in 2008 he first needed to get over the pain.
His friend, Kevin Schriefels, told reporters "he was rating the pain pretty high".
That's when he took an accidental fatal dose of fentanyl. A year earlier, the death of another American bodybuilder, 34-year-old Clinton Bitz, was also attributed to the drug, which had been prescribed to his father.
FENTANYL IS STRONGER THAN MORPHINE
Fentanyl is part of a group of drugs known as opioids and is about 80 to 100 times stronger than morphine, according to the Alcohol and Drug Foundation.
It is often prescribed in the event of chronic, severe pain as a result of cancer, nerve damage, back injury, major trauma and surgery.
Apart from patches, it also comes in the form of lozenges/lollipops and as an intravenous injection.
According to the foundation, the drug affects everyone differently based on size, weight and health, the amount taken and the strength of the drug that varies between patches.
At the time of Michael's death in 2015, drug expert Amanda Roxburgh told news.com.au fentanyl was "a powerful analgesic more potent than morphine".
She said Michael may have suffered a stronger response to the drug if he was "opiate naive" or his body was not used to strong painkillers.
"If somebody is opiate naive then the drug is going to be a lot more potent. It also depends on the dosage," she said.
Ms Roxburgh published a paper in 2013 about fentanyl-related mortality in Australia. In it, she concluded, "fentanyl-related mortality started to increase the same time as prescribing rates, with the number of deaths increasing from four in 2007 to 14 in 2008."