• Dasus@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Anytime someone compares those two, you can just point out that people aren’t dependent on porn or gaming. That their bodies won’t shock themselves to death if they go cold turkey.

    The keyword being dependency. People use those interchangeably, but they’re two medically distinct things and you usually have both to a drug, but not necessarily. You can be addicted and not dependent or dependent without addiction. The first one would be someone who still wants to use and dreams about it despite having had no substance for years, and the second one is for instance a long term pain patient who didn’t even know what medication they were on but start shivering and getting nauseous as they forget to take their meds, despite them not having any psychological need to take them.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_dependence

    It’s somewhat okay to use them interchangeably but it would be super rude to talk about how addicted to one’s phone one is while someone is talking about having gone through actual substance use disorder, addiction, dependency and all.

    Good job on pulling through man!