Rapper 360's slow, tentative recovery from addiction began on the floor of the Great Northern Hotel, Byron Bay. It was January 2015. He was part-way through a 16-date tour of regional Australia, travelling the country with a half-suitcase of clothes and a half-suitcase of painkiller medication.

"I should be dead. I should definitely be dead," he says looking back now, gym buffed and one year sober, in triple j's Melbourne studio.

Hours before his Byron Bay set 360 had taken 120 pills, passed out, and been found convulsing on the floor. He was not trying to kill himself, he said later in hospital. Actually he had been taking 90 painkillers a day for every day of the tour. He could not stop taking them. He was addicted to codeine, an opiate derived from morphine, present in drugs such as Nurofen Plus. He had been addicted for years.

Things were complicated. He was taking the legal drugs so he could travel through airports without heroin. And then he was using heroin when he ran out of legal drugs.

Friends knew about the heroin; Nurofen Plus was the secret.

In a Hack broadcast exclusive, rapper 360, born Matt Colwell, has described the lows of his secret addiction and his battle to finally shake the drugs and get clean.

His story is one of many. Over the past 10 years drug services have reported a tripling of people presenting with codeine dependency. Australia is one of few nations that sell codeine over the counter - unlike America, most of Europe, India and Japan.

In the grip of an addiction, 360 could walk into any Australian pharmacy and buy packets of codeine without having to show a doctor's prescription, without presenting identification.

A drug such as Nurofen Plus has both codeine and ibuprofen. Codeine is addictive, but ibuprofen is more dangerous. Too much causes liver problems, and emergency staff at Sydney's St Vincent hospital encounter codeine addicts with bleeding gastric ulcers.

"You can actually have massive hemorrhage - run into renal failure," says the hospital's Alcohol and Drug Service Clinical Director, Nadine Ezard.

"The codeine part is the least dangerous."

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Whatsapp Rapper 360 performs at the ARIA Awards 2012.

'This is over the counter stuff so you feel quite stupid'

The problem of painkiller addiction may be more widespread; under-reported simply because it can seem banal compared to an illicit substance such as crystal methamphetamine, the drug also known as ice. When 360 posted a music video early this year outing his addiction, the response was overwhelming: more than eight million hits in 10 days, and comments that suggested he had tapped a deep well of pain.

It also sparked calls for stricter regulations on sales of codeine-based products.

"I'd never seen anyone prominent actually speak about about it," one of the men commenting on 360's video told Hack.

Steve, 22, from Frankston in Victoria, has been addicted to painkillers since a car accident twelve months ago. He has not told his doctors, his psychologist, or his parents that he cannot stop taking codeine, and that every month as his body builds up tolerance he is taking more and more of the drug. He spends his days playing computer games and collecting 40-pill boxes of codeine medication from a roster of pharmacies.

"If I do talk about it people might not give me the codeine," he says. "I'll be treated like an addict because that's actually how it feels."

Codeine addiction is furtive - unlike with a drug such as ice, codeine addicts often experience the drug on their own, and are better able to hide the habit from friends. When 360 posted the video outing himself, more than 20,000 commented.

Five years ago Shawn Reay, 39, an Albany graphic designer, was swallowing handfuls of 15 codeine pills in one go, adding up to 100 a day. He told no-one except a few friends.

"You keep it to yourself, it's not like an official drug on the street," he told Hack. "This is over the counter stuff so you feel quite stupid."

360 was even more secretive than Shawn.

"Everyone knew I was a massive party animal and loved drinking. I wasn't hiding drinking or cocaine or anything but the other shit I would hide."

"I think my biggest regret is I didn't tell anyone."

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Whatsapp Rapper 360

'I used to bounce six pharmacies in one suburb'

That night one year ago at the Northern Hotel in Byron Bay, 360's waiting fans were told the rapper had gone down with a "sudden illness".

He had been trying to go clean for months - staying with his parents and lying in bed staring at the ceiling until, after three or four days of withdrawals, he had caved and gone to the pharmacy to stock up on the drug again. He knew all the pharmacies, and knew how to spread his drug purchases to avoid raising suspicion. Unlike with over-the-counter cold and flu medication (which can contain pseudoephedrine, used to make methamphetamine and ecstasy, and therefore purchases are tracked) there is no national or state database of people who have bought over-the-counter painkillers.

"I went to bunch of pharmacies and just filled up my luggage with Nurofen Plus. Half my suitcase was boxes of it - that was to get me through the tour."

As the 360 interview is broadcast live on Hack, a listener texted the show:

"I worked in a pharmacy in the city and sold some to 360. He didn't show any of the addiction signs. He was always calm and quiet."

But 360 thinks he was showing plenty of signs, and pharmacists knew.

"But they never approached me about it - they kind of treated me like a junkie. They see I'm covered in tattoos, they see I'm quite sick at the time."

A part of him wanted a pharmacist to stop him and offer help, another part of him, more cunning, devised routines, and drove him to serve his habit.

"I got really good at remembering which pharmacies I'd frequented. If I'd hit them week and a half ago. I used to do mad trips where I used to bounce six in one suburb - and then go the next and hit up every pharmacy there."

Until at last everything unravelled that night in Byron Bay, passing out and convulsing, and then waking up hours later in hospital. He had a phone call. It was his parents.

The secret was out.

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'Nothing could have stopped me living that life'

Solutions to the problem of over the counter codeine addiction fall into two camps: making it a class of drugs that can only be bought with a doctor's prescription, (like OxyContin), or making it a class of drugs that can only be bought by registering name and address.

The first option is being considered by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) while the second is supported by the Pharmacy Guild of Australia. Both options have their problems. Making codeine a scheduled drug could be inconvenient for people who need access for genuine pain relief. It also does not stop patients from doctor shopping - visiting several doctors to get multiple codeine prescriptions. It could also see an expensive increase in public-funded doctors appointments. The second option could add an administrative expense and also add the desperation of addicts who are refused relief from cravings.

Neither option addresses how to actually help those who are addicted. As the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre's Dr Suzanne Nielsen points out, those on the frontline, the pharmacists, are not trained to intervene, or provide advice on therapy.

"Pharmacists don't necessarily have the words to talk about these difficult areas of addiction."

These days 360 goes to sleep at nine, curling up with his dog, and when the cravings come he distracts himself with movies, distracts himself with exercise, distracts himself writing music. The cravings always come. Mornings he exhausts himself at the gym. He has been sober a year, but still lives in the shadow of his addiction. It might always be this way.

He thinks either a central register or making codeine a scheduled drug would work.

"I think the least thing they should do is take people's ID."

Looking back, he reckons the hip hop scene has a culture that glorifies drug use, but he always knew that, he had chosen that life, that was the life that he wanted. He grew up reading the biographies of Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis and Motley Crue, and he wanted to become the kind of rock star that took lots of drugs.

"I don't think anything could have stopped me living that life. I just had to go through it."

Now that he wants another kind of life, he's had to cut himself loose from old friends, people that he still loves. "So many friends I used to party with and go on benders with that can't be around anymore because I want to party."

"My social life is terrible, but I'm very happy and glad I'm alive because I should should be dead. I should definitely be dead."

Listen back to the full radio show:

360 speaks to Hack about addiction and getting clean. Aussie rapper 360 explains how his over-the-counter painkiller addiction spiralled, and how he turned his life around.

Watch 360's live video stream, answering questions from the Hack audience here.

Editor's Note: an earlier version of this article referred to 360's addiction to Nurofen, rather than Nurofen Plus. Nurofen does not contain codeine, whereas Nurofen Plus does. This article was corrected at 9:22am, 19/01/16.

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.