Comment by superkuh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by superkuh | Hacker News Reader

>Yet withdrawal has never been a focus of drug makers or government regulators, who felt antidepressants could not be addictive and did far more good than harm.

They're not addictive. They cause dependence. There is an important difference. Addictive things increase incentive salience of stimuli associated with the drug. They increase wanting. And that increased wanting leads to increased usage.

Dependence on a drug does not have this aspect. It just represents the bodies physiological adaptation to the new state.

Conflating the two is bad practice for an article ostensibly about medicine. And it leads people, and that set includes legislators, to think about using more government violence to enforce regulations of drugs which create dependence.

Having been addicted to prescription pills, and currently being prescribed (and presumably dependent on) antidepressants, I think there are a few points that make the distinction abundantly clear:

1. When I consider stopping antidepressants, I'm not filled with anything like the dread I was when I thought about giving up the addictive pills.

2. I forget to take my antidepressants sometimes. I forget to refill the prescription sometimes.

3. I have never had any desire to take more than the prescribed dose of my antidepressants.

It's an important distinction, and unfortunately one that folks in the recovery community sometimes miss. In my experience the above characterization usually brings it home much better than some heavily medicalized description of addiction vs dependency.

While your differentiation between addiction and dependency is certainly correct as the medical profession defines these thing, simple dependency would sound like addiction to a lot of average people.

Further, it should be obvious that dependency is a problem. If the medical profession thinks it's solved that problem by redefining words, I'd say state regulation is pretty appropriate step.

Have you kicked your oxygen dependence yet?

I'm getting there one day at a time :)

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