Symptoms of Opioid Withdrawal — Page 2

The difference between opioid addiction and dependence

There’s a difference between dependence on and addiction to opioids, according to the National Institutes of Health. Dependence occurs as your body adapts physiologically to chronic opioid exposure over time. The result is physical discomfort when you miss a dose of an opioid. Tolerance often develops, too, along with dependency — meaning you need to take increasing amounts of the opioid to achieve the effect the drug originally gave you.

Dependence is a part of addiction, but addiction has other components, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Addiction involves additional changes in your brain and causes a compulsion to seek the drug, even by illegal or other inappropriate ways.

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