Originally Posted by
jackrippah
Some people actually need pain meds for more than 3 days. People who simply can not function well enough to get through a day without the meds. Who have to maintain a household - take care of the kids - make a living. I believe most rational people don't want or need two serious problems and stop use, as you said 'as soon as I (they) could' . Perhaps I am naive but I believe that most ordinary people who are taking opioids long enough for them to become addicted are in a box created by their medical problem and a poor pharmaceutical solution for survival which slowly become less and less effective.
There is a difference between physiological accommodation and addiction. People who take opioids for a long time, e.g. cancer patients among others, become physiologically accommodated to the opioid in that higher doses are required over time to obtain adequate relief. A physiologically accommodated person can routinely use and tolerate an opiate dose that would cause serious respiratory depression or even death in an opiate-naïve person, and abruptly stopping their opiates would cause physiological withdrawal. But physiological withdrawal symptoms do not mean addiction. Addiction is a psychological issue in which the person seeks the opiate or other drug for non-medical reasons and it must be treated separately from physiological withdrawal or else there is a high risk of recidivism.