Douglas Anderson wrote in a message to TOM JANTZ:
 TJ> What IS THE Difference BETWEEN ADDICTION AND dependence. I ran out of
 TJ> meds and started getting the shakes and I was having strange feelings
 TJ> almost like an LSD trip. I think they are as addictive as opiates
 DA> Physical and psychological dependence means that if you stop taking
 DA> the drug you will go through a withdrawal syndrome, such as the
 DA> shakes and strange feelings you were having.
Physical addiction by definition involves a physiological withdrawal
effect.  Psychological addiction means that you repeatedly seek to
duplicate an experience because you desire the experience -- there
is no physical syndrome in response to stopping something to which
one is only psychologically addicted, except possibly a physical
response to your anxiety at being deprived of something you enjoyed,
not to the lack of the substance itself.
 DA>   Everyone who is addicted is dependent, but
 DA> not everyone who is dependent is addicted.  I take blood pressure
 DA> medicine.  If I quit taking my medicine I go through a well-defined
 DA> withdrawal syndrome.  I am physically dependent on my blood
 DA> pressure medicine.  But calling me addicted to it would be
 DA> ridiculous.
Why?  Because you attach a different emotional meaning to the words?
Of course, no one probably considers themselves addicted to air or
water although we are dependent on them.  This is because they are
substances that are essential for life.  But, if you define addiction
as the body's dependence on a non-essential substance the withdrawal
of which results in a physical syndrome, it seems that dependence on
that substance (in your case a drug) is the same as addiction.  Since
it apparently helps you live what you feel is a better life there is
nothing to be ashamed of -- no matter whether you call it addiction
or something else.
 DA>   Medical society here in the US has a very poor
 DA> understanding in general of dependence and addiction, and it leads
 DA> to further misuse of medications and poor treatment of dependent
 DA> patients.
There is also the assumption that addiction in itself is inherently
bad.  In a society that attempts to depict everything in terms of
black/white or right/wrong there is no appreciation of differing
degrees of addiction or of putting addiction into the perspective
of a person's whole life.  For example, there are physicians who
will withhold painkillers from hurting and even terminally ill
patients because the patients might become addicted.  This is absurd
when the problem of the pain or the imminence of death and lack of
ability to enjoy daily life dwarfs any addiction issue.  It is
amazing how self-righteously hypocritical humans can be in
their "morality".
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