Dependence vs Addiction Difference Between Dependence And Addiction

With professional treatment, it can take several months to a year or more to achieve lasting recovery. Remember that recovery is a process, and it’s important to have support and understanding throughout the journey. Addiction treatment is available, and taking the first step towards seeking help can make all the difference in your journey toward recovery. If so, it’s important for you to treat it with the seriousness it requires and get help before it’s too late.

Mental Dependence Vs. Physical Dependence

Addiction recovery can involve addressing both physical and psychological health. Sometimes, severe withdrawal symptoms require monitoring from doctors in a hospital setting. With alcohol addiction, or severe alcohol use disorder, a person finds it difficult to stop drinking https://thecaliforniadigest.com/top-5-advantages-of-staying-in-a-sober-living-house/ much of the time, not only in certain situations. Mental dependence is when a person relies on a substance or behavior to cope with emotional challenges. For example, a person may drink alcohol when they feel stressed but otherwise feel no compulsion to drink.

• But the biggest source of confusion concerns the word “dependence.” Prior to the DSM-III, the term “dependence” simply meant physiological dependence, as indicated by tolerance and withdrawal symptoms.
• If you believe you have an addiction, it’s never too late to look for help.
• Untreated substance use disorders can be detrimental to mental, physical, emotional, social, and financial health.
• Drugs change the brain in ways that make quitting hard, even for those who want to.
• Remember that recovery is a process, and it’s important to have support and understanding throughout the journey.

Why do some people become addicted to drugs while others don’t?

People who are recovering from an addiction will be at risk for relapse for years and possibly for their whole lives. Research shows that combining addiction treatment medicines with behavioral therapy ensures the best chance of success for most patients. Treatment approaches tailored to each patient’s drug use patterns and any co-occurring medical, mental, and social problems can lead to continued recovery. But the ICD has yet Top 5 Advantages of Staying in a Sober Living House to catch up and since American billing systems and other records often rely on ICD, this conflation continues to cause problems both in the United States and rest of the world. There is no justification for keeping this misleading term in light of what we now know about the nature of addiction. For one, depending on a substance to avoid physical withdrawal symptoms is neither necessary nor sufficient to define addiction.

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• Supportive friends, family members and healthcare providers play an essential role in effective treatment as well.
• You may assume that certain substances are more addictive than others, and that is partially true, Mr. Kump says.
• A person with an addiction has difficulty not using substances or doing rewarding activities, even if it is harming them.
• This addictive behavior can be personally destructive to a person.
• When someone is dependent, their body adapts to a drug and requires more of it to achieve the same effect.

Most people today seem to use the terms “addiction” and “dependency” interchangeably. Some nuances can make it difficult to determine if someone is addicted or dependent on a substance. On the other hand, dependence refers strictly to a physical need for a substance.

Addiction vs. dependence: What is the difference?

In fact, the American Psychiatric Association (APA), who are the developers of the DSM, nonchalantly utilize the terms “substance use disorder” and “addiction” interchangeably on their website. One of the main medical texts that are used by mental health professionals to diagnose addiction is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM), which is currently in its fifth edition. The National Institute on Drug Abuse notes that tolerance occurs in a drug or alcohol user when the user needs more of the drug or alcohol to get the same effect that occurred during the initial periods of intake. It’s a grim scenario that unfortunately is found in many drug abuse cases year after year. Studies have shown that addiction can form in individuals through a combination of genetic makeup and poor social skills.

As a result, many physicians are ill-equipped to differentiate addiction from dependence due to a lack of expertise. Other professionals who diagnose addiction (e.g. social workers, physician assistants, nurse-practitioners, addiction counselors) also need better education about these distinctions. You are dependent if you stop taking the drug and experience withdrawal symptoms. When the symptoms of mental and physical dependence are apparent, an addiction is usually present. However, the main characteristic that distinguishes addiction from dependence is the combination of mental and physical dependence with uncontrollable behavior in obtaining and using a substance. Mental dependence is when use of a substance is a conditioned response to an event or feeling.