Robyn took prescription drugs for her jaw pain, became addicted, and one day the guy who sold her weed suggested she try heroin. She was 23.

"He said it's the same thing as taking endones as it's an opiate and it's much better for pain relief and you'll get a buzz out of it at least," Robyn says. "I just remember thinking, well if I'm already taking endones and I already have this habit anyway, why not?"

"There's nothing else I've got to lose."

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Whatsapp Robyn's name has been changed for this article.

Three years earlier, before she was addicted, she had been working part-time at a Sydney nightclub. She had a busy social life, she went to the gym. She was happy. Then the pain arrived in her life; migraines became more common, and then constant. She found it hard to function, to eat or talk properly, to keep working without painkillers.

"Then it just started to escalate."

Fortunately, there were prescription drugs for pain. Lots of drugs. Her prescription was for Endone - the brand name of a medicine containing the active ingredient Oxycodone. Endone, or Oxycondone, is an opioid narcotic, like morphine, like heroin.

Robyn's story is part of a broader pattern of increasing heroin use in Australia. The drug was said to have reached "epidemic" levels in 1980s and 1990s. Then it fell away, replaced by methamphetamines, including drugs such as ice.

From today, a drug that works as an antidote to heroin and other kinds of opioid overdoses is available over the counter in Australian pharmacies. The drug, called naloxone, is being sold as a single-use filled syringe. Other versions may be on the way. In the US, a nasal spray version of the drug is being offered for free to high schools.

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Whatsapp The drug Naloxone can be injected to reverse heroin and other opioid drug overdoses.

Heroin is back with a vengeance

In Kings Cross in Sydney, an area long associated with heroin use, the Medically Supervised Injecting Centre is reporting more clients injecting heroin. From the first half of 2015 to the second, the centre saw a 60 per cent spike in the number of heroin injections.

This increase in heroin use may be associated with an increase in addiction to other kinds of painkillers, both those available over-the-counter, such as Nurofen Plus, and ones that require a prescription, like the Endone Robyn began taking to treat her jaw pain.

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"I sort of had a realisation that I needed these pills, that I felt like I had to have them but I couldn't survive. It was really scary being so young and so dependent on painkillers," she says.

"If I didn't have Endone and codeine-based pills, and I was not addicted, I would not have touched heroin."

She started taking heroin in December 2014.

Painkiller use driving heroin addiction, service providers say

Robyn never visited the Medically Supervised Injecting Centre in Kings Cross - the only supervised injecting centre in the southern hemisphere - and wishes the pharmacists who sold her needles had told her of the facility. The clinic opened its doors in 2001 as a response to the high rate of people dying as a result of accidental heroin overdoses.

Injecting drug users are able to come to the clinic with drugs such as heroin and legally self-administer them under the supervision of trained staff.

The medical director of the centre, Dr Marianne Jauncey, says in the United States prescription painkiller addiction was driving the "epidemic" rate of increase in heroin use.

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Whatsapp Dr Marianne Jauncey.

"Most of the people we see began on heroin, but we are starting to see this increasing emergence of people who actually began through prescribed medication," she says.

"Certainly in the United States - they're probably more advanced in terms of this epidemic than we are - they're seeing massive numbers of people who began on prescription opiates and have graduated to heroin.

"It's starting to be increasingly seen and that's really worrying. As a medical profession we're creating harm."

She said the trend of more and more heroin injections at the clinic - a 60 per cent increase from the first to the second half of 2015 - had continued in the first month of 2016.

'United States a warning to Australia'

Other service providers say it could be the start of a much bigger upward trend.

Family Drug Support Australia, a national organisation that provides services to families affected by drugs, has seen double the number of calls about heroin in the last six months. The increase was from four per cent to eight per cent of calls - a difference of about 1300 calls in half a year.

Authorities are worried Australia is following the same trend as the United States, where it's estimated 120 people die per day from heroin overdose. That's about 43,000 people each year.

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Whatsapp The New York Police Department is being provided 19,500 kits of Naloxone for officers. The Naloxone is administered nasally.

And there, as well, painkillers are the entry drug driving heroin's comeback, according to Australian Crime Commission CEO Chris Dawson.

"Information from our partner agencies in the United States indicate that there has been an alarming progression on the use of opiates from pharmaceuticals - predominantly Oxycodone - and there have been a migration of people buying and using street heroin," he says.

America accounts for about five per cent of the world's population but 90 per cent of the global amount of painkillers consumed.

'Naloxone not the solution to addiction'

Naloxone blocks the opioid from working on the brain and nervous system and reportedly has no effect on anyone without opioids in their system.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) - the Australian body that regulates access to medicines - rescheduled the drug after receiving 96 submissions in support of making naloxone available over the counter from a pharmacist.

It is hoped that by making the drug available outside of emergency departments and ambulances it will be administered more quickly and prevent more overdoses.

"We need to be present, we need to recognise that it's an overdose, we need to know what to do, and we need Narcan," says Dr Jauncey, referring to one of the naloxone's brand names.

But naloxone will not deal with the underlying causes of opiate addiction, she adds.

"We know now just how common chronic pain is - up to 20 per cent of the population can have some form of chronic pain.

"Unfortunately there's been a tendency to write a script rather than looking at the other things that people can do in their lifestyle that might reduce their pain."

'The pain doesn't control me'

In December 2015, Robyn checked herself into heroin rehab and began taking the opiate dependence medication Suboxone (which also includes naloxone).

She says she has come to terms with her jaw pain, which she believes is a consequence of being sexually abused as a child. She's now also receiving therapy for her these past abuses.

"It caused me to grind and clench my teeth in my sleep with horrific nightmares. I've never dealt with those core issues before. I've started to realise why I was hurting myself.

"I feel alive again. I feel like the old me is dead and I'm reborn. I'm not the pain.

"The pain doesn't control me. I can get through this."

If you're having any issues with drugs, alcohol or anything else you can always call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or get in touch with ReachOut or Family Drug Support Australia.