compensatory mechanisms

Addiction is an oft misused term.  Addiction is the body becoming accustomed to the presence of a drug.  When you remove the drug, it takes time to adjust physiologically, and this results in withdrawal symptoms. This does not occur just from taking the drug.  It occurs with regular use.  The more you do, the more regularly, the more your body will try to get used to it.

This also results in tolerance.  As the body compensates, in assuming the presence of the drug, the less of an impact it will have.  Common wisdom is that you need more to get the same effect, but the truth is, that never quite works as well.  The system absorbs some chemical reactions better than others, resulting in a different balance.  A diminished efficacy, as long as compensatory mechanisms are involved.

The drug becomes a blunter instrument, the more dosage is increased.  Less of what you want, and more of everything else.  The more desperate you are to feel it anyhow, the more you keep upping the dosage anyhow.  Sometimes it's necessary.  Sometimes it's dangerous.

Dr. Hart thinks the problem is ignorance, and I'm sure that he is right, to some degree.  If only people knew, not to combine sedatives, such as opiates and alcohol, he says.  Except, addicts do that because they know it's a way of pushing through tolerance.  I wonder how many would keep doing it anyhow.

Addiction is not something that happens just from taking a drug.  Opioids are especially addictive, but people often take them for weeks without becoming addicts.  Recreationally, people use all sorts of drugs intermittently.

We live with addictions all the time, and with a steady intake of the drug, they aren't necessarily a problem.  They're never really ideal, though.  It takes the brain months to return to normal, from caffeine addiction.  Not from drinking coffee at all, but from drinking 2-4 cups a day, every day, for decades.

In the US, drug overdoses are the leading cause of death now, in people under 50.  I appreciate the crusade against Big Pharma on their victims' behalf, but I've always felt blaming the dealers to be almost as misguided as blaming users.  Addiction occurs when people already have a problem.  The reason they're doing the drug every day.  That's not the effect of addiction, it's the cause.