I had serious withdrawal symptoms 24 hours after medicating myself with controlled doses of hydromorphone after surgery. It’s always been remarkable to me how many people confidently assert I wasn’t addicted.
Conversely I'm on long term anti depressants and I get withdrawal symptoms if I forget to take them, but no one is ever referred to as being addicted to anti depressants.
I suspect there are different (social) mechanisms at work here, but addiction is generally applied to one specific form of drug reliance.
> but no one is ever referred to as being addicted to anti depressants
People who are sceptical of antidepressants, such as Professor Joanna Moncrieff (University of College London), do speak of them as “addictive”, and consider their use to (at least sometimes) be a case of “prescribed drug dependency”, and also speak of “withdrawal” from them
