All medications are drugs. Many have potential for dependence and some have potential for addiction. Dependence and addiction are not the same thing. When a person develops a dependence on a medication they will need to taper off use of it. Dependence is a purely physiological condition. Addiction has both physiological ans psychological components. With addiction, a person needs increasing amounts of a substance for it to continue having the desired affect. While a person can experience some distress in discontinuing a medication that they are dependent on, the distress is markedly worse in withdrawing from a medication or substance that they are addicted to.
Statistically, less than 1 percent of people become addicted to any medication. The medications with the greatest potential for addiction are opiate painkillers, not psychoactive medications such as antidepressants.
1 comments:
When I was a teen, drugs was a different thing. It was the last drink from a bottle of soda, like Coke. When someone was drinking a pop, we'd say, "Save me the drugs." which meant leave me the last drink in the bottle.
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