When Wayne Douglas arrived home in New Zealand from Japan in early 2001, his own mother didn't recognize him at the airport.
"She said that I looked like a half-dead zombie," Douglas recalls. "My mother had to drive me to the doctors' rooms, which were only about 100 meters down the road, (because) I was unable to walk that far at the time."
Douglas' departure from Japan was a sudden and painful one, and was precipitated by a severe addiction to benzodiazepines, a type of tranquilizer he had been unwittingly prescribed by a Japanese doctor.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.