There's almost no chance of you developing an opiate addiction from a prescribed dose if you don't already have a history of addiction: https://www.google.com/amp/s/fivethirtyeight.com/features/wh...
This is a false narrative that needs to go away.
This is a false narrative that needs to go away.
That's only true (if it is true) if they're used short term. People in this thread aren't talking about acute pain, they're talking about chronic (long term) pain.
It's likely that opioids are addictive if used long term to treat long term pain.
Here's what actual doctors say: https://www.rcoa.ac.uk/faculty-of-pain-medicine/opioids-awar...
EDIT: FFS, your own link says this:
> “Physiological dependence is the normal response to regular dosages of many medications, whether opioids or others. It also happens with beta blockers for high blood pressure,” said Dr. Wilson Compton, deputy director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Your link says that opioids create physical addiction. The physical addiction to opioids causes all the factors of the newer definition of adddictive: tolerance, drug seeking, preoccupation, and continuing to take it even though you know it's harmful.
What's important is the psychological addiction. You can taper off of a medication on which you are physiologically dependent. However, if it makes you psychologically dependent, you can never forget the high.
Turns out not having pain because a medication helps and you experience it when you stop makes people want to keep taking it. Who knew?
It's when people take more than they need to to address their physical pain, that they experience psychological addiction, that they chase the high, that a problem develops.
Turns out not having pain because a medication helps and you experience it when you stop makes people want to keep taking it. Who knew?
That is not what's happening. People take the medication to treat the pain. Their pain still exists. They develop a tolerance to opioids (one of the mechanisms of addiction) and need to increase the dose. Now they're taking very large -dangerously large- doses of opioids but are still in pain.
This behaviour is long established and well known.
Opioids do not cause drug seeking behaviour in all people.