Comment by LorenPechtel
1 month ago
And for some reason we only use "addiction" to describe things that are recreational in nature, not drugs that have no recreational use but can be quite dangerous to discontinue abruptly.
1 month ago
And for some reason we only use "addiction" to describe things that are recreational in nature, not drugs that have no recreational use but can be quite dangerous to discontinue abruptly.
I’m not a doctor but I’m pretty sure that’s not the case.
Substances like caffeine, sugar, and painkillers are definitely still referred to as “addictive”.
Whereas substances like sertraline (antidepressant) are referred to as a “dependence” because it’s dangerous to discontinue abruptly (as you said) but there isn’t any psychological addiction involved.
To elaborate, I think experts usually use these terms as follows: an addiction is something where you have a continuous and difficult to resist drive to keep doing/using something due to it being inherently rewarding. A dependence is something where if you stop regularly doing/using something you’ll experience some sort of withdrawal.