Quote:
Originally Posted by Saffy
The funny thing is, I said I felt I had been addicted to it .. He said, when you have chronic pain there is no such thing as addiction, just dependency. I thought they sounded both the same ..
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They are not.
Quote:
In 2001, the American Academy of Pain Medicine, the American Pain Society, and the American Society of Addiction Medicine jointly issued "Definitions Related to the Use of Opioids for the Treatment of Pain", which defined the following terms:[3]
Addiction is a primary, chronic, neurobiologic disease, with genetic, psychosocial, and environmental factors influencing its development and manifestations. It is characterized by behaviors that include one or more of the following: impaired control over drug use, compulsive use, continued use despite harm, and craving.
Physical dependence is a state of being that is manifested by a drug class specific withdrawal syndrome that can be produced by abrupt cessation, rapid dose reduction, decreasing blood level of the drug, and/or administration of an antagonist.
Tolerance is the body's physical adaptation to a drug: greater amounts of the drug are required over time to achieve the initial effect as the body "gets used to" and adapts to the intake.
Pseudo addiction is a term which has been used to describe patient behaviors that may occur when pain is undertreated. Patients with unrelieved pain may become focused on obtaining medications, may "clock watch," and may otherwise seem inappropriately "drug seeking." Even such behaviors as illicit drug use and deception can occur in the patient's efforts to obtain relief. Pseudoaddiction can be distinguished from true addiction in that the behaviors resolve when pain is effectively treated. A definition of addiction proposed by professor Nils Bejerot:
An emotional fixation (sentiment) acquired through learning, which intermittently or continually expresses itself in purposeful, stereotyped behavior with the character and force of a natural drive, aiming at a specific pleasure or the avoidance of a specific discomfort.[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_dependence
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To say it more succinctly, pain patients don't
want to take their meds - they
have to for a
medically therapeutic reason. Addicts
want to take/abuse a drug for its effects
without a medical reason, and can't wait for the next/higher dose.
Everyone must make their own decision whether to take/continue with a medication, but there are better/easier/safer ways of discontinuing dependence-producing meds. Our doctors can/will help us with this too, without going through that hell.
Doc