But she does not want his death in 2010 to be in vain, and her work since has saved the lives of many others.

Mrs Millington and her husband John campaigned for a system to expose 'doctor shoppers', allow doctors to make informed and safe decisions when prescribing certain drugs and for pharmacists to be able to check a patient's prescribing history.

It took them more than 10 years, but SafeScripts real-time prescription monitoring program was rolled out in Victoria in 2018.

"Simon suffered a single car accident in 1994 with multiple severe life-threatening injuries and was in and out of hospital for six months initially but after that he had lots of orthopedic issues and had many operations to try to rectify issues ... and give him a better way of life.

"In the end however, it would be medications, given to help him, that would prove to be the biggest problem, not just his injuries. He had become addicted to the opioids and benzodiazepines which he had been given so freely after his accident, to relieve his pain."

Mrs Millington said alarm bells rang for her when they realised the "ridiculous" amount of medication Simon was coming home with, but at first assumed things were fine because they were prescribed.

As his addiction raged, when he did not have the drugs he wanted Simon would "doctor shop" to find someone to prescribe him the painkillers he wanted as his worried family realised the doctors he was seeing were unaware of what he was taking, how much he was taking and where he was getting it from.

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So they set about creating a system where doctors and pharmacists were aware of what drugs patients had been prescribed and, eventually, Safe Scripts was launched.

Even though talking about Simon's death is difficult, Mrs Millington is determined to tell his story and will speak at Ballarat Community Health's #endoverdose event to mark International Overdose Awareness Day at the Ballarat Mechanics Institute at 6pm on Wednesday..

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"There needs to be a lot more education done and that's why we do it, to prevent further deaths and families going through what we did," she said.

"Initially I thought no one wants to hear Simon's story and Simon wouldn't want us to tell it, but at the end of the day it's such a critical issue in our world so I do it in his memory and prevent it from happening again ... I didn't want him to die in vain."

Ms Millington said recent changes to guidelines for doctors discharging patients from hospital with opioid painkillers, the introduction of take-home naloxone, a treatment to reverse overdoses would help save lives.

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