I have to say that is true but with caveats.
Unnecessarily long and technical data dump follows. Read at your own risk.
Addiction takes place when you consume a drug - or a close relative of a drug - that your body already produces naturally. Your body sees this as an overload, stops producing its own, and goes into overtime in neutralizing what you've taken. Do that for long enough and your own production capacity withers and you become dependant on the drug for what your body would have done naturally. At the same time it gets better and better at processing out the substitute because it is in excess of your needs.
For example, your body produces adrenaline all the time. It is a natural upper that keeps you awake and alert. When something comes along that requires increased alertness, you get a little extra. This isn't fight-or-flight mode, just seeing something interesting can do it.
Let's say you're driving yourself with too little sleep and you start drinking coffee to wake up. Caffeine is a relative of adrenaline. A cup or so won't cause most people problems. You get the best results if you drink it an hour after you get up,
after your body's natural a.m. adrenaline surge..
But - you're still not getting enough sleep. Consequently, as your sleep debt builds up, it takes more am coffee to crank the engine. Your body is saying, "Hey dude. You need to be sleeping now!" It kicks in the hyperdrive to metabolize that caffeine and cuts back on natural adrenaline production. The caffeine wears off, you don't have your natural stimulant, so it is back to the coffee pot. Over time you have less and less natural stimulant while at the same time you are getting better at processing out the artificial stimulant.
You are now addicted to caffeine. Stop cold turkey and you'll feel run down and likely have headaches. There's a syndrome known as "weekend headache" because many people only drink coffee related to going to work. From Friday afternoon to Sunday they don't drink coffee. Their weekends are a mess. They are addicts. But since the caffeine in a cup of coffee is only a mild level of stimulant and coffee doesn't instantly pump you full of euphoria, there isn't a huge psychological component. The level isn't that high, so going cold turkey doesn't leave you incapacitated
Nicotine does the same thing as caffeine only it hits you almost instantly. The "rush" is stronger. So there's a powerful learned connection here. A drag on a cig is an instant pleasure on a very fundamental level and you come to want it. The act of sticking something in your mouth to suck on becomes a habit. There may be a social reward as well if you and your smoking friends flock together over your habit. It takes a powerful impetus to overcome the immediate effects of sucking burning vegetation into your lungs. But if you do it enough you can get used to almost any level of abuse.
The instant reward and social habituation are the psychological side effects of addiction. They can be more difficult to overcome than physical withdrawal.
Amphetamines are yet a step beyond nicotine and meth is a step beyond that. The secondary effects of those can kill you or leave you insane. I've seen it in real life.
Barbiturate (downers) addiction is a special kind of hell as your body develops a tolerance for the euphoria but not for the lethal side effects - falling asleep permanently. Or falling asleep, vomiting, and drowning in your own puke. That's what happened to Marylin Monroe.
Suddenly stopping barbiturates can also be lethal, rather like alcohol.
Alcohol is a depressant. It slows your brain and nervous system. When you suddenly stop drinking after a long period of alcohol use, your brain and nervous system can’t adjust quickly. Your brain gets overstimulated. Chemicals get produced that spike a particular amino acid. And that in turn causes alcohol withdrawal delirium (the DTs) which can kill you.
Opiates do the same thing as nicotine except they are replacing the natural opiates your body produces instead of adrenaline. They are called
endorphins, natural happy-making and pain killing drugs your body produces. The euphoria is stronger than nicotine. A whole ritual is developed relative to their consumption. Opiate withdrawal is nothing but how your body feels when deprived of its naturally produced endorphins. But the story here isn't so clear-cut.
In and of themselves, opiates aren't a death sentence. An addict can maintain a low level of consumption forever without serious effects. That's why maintenance programs help. It is the uncontrolled use of opiates that is problematic.
If you are taking opiates at the proper level for pain, you will not become addicted. You never get to the point of euphoria. Your brain never gets to the point of saying, "There's no pain here. Why am I flooded with this stuff? Quick, shut down production and spool up removal!" As we all know, people often don't take
just enough codeine or hydrocodone to take the edge off the pain,
they take it to make it go away completely and then some. And that is how you get addicted to prescription painkillers. Synthetic opiates like Oxycontin are
astonishingly effective at this.
Another factor is consistency. Most drugs, opiates included, require regular use over short time intervals for addiction to take place. Do heroin every day and you'll be addicted very quickly. Do it once a month and you will never get addicted. Your body has time to completely re-zero itself between uses. Most people can even shoot up on a weekly basis and not be addicted.
The psychological effects may still be there but there will be no chemical withdrawal.
That is the first reason why all those soldiers did not become addicted. They weren't spending their days in opium dens. Most of the time they were doing things and in places that made regular consumption impossible. The psychological desire might be there but the opportunity was not.
The second reason is that they were taking heroin in response to pain. In this case, it was the psychological pain of the endless hell of war. Heroin doesn't become addicting unless you're doing well it in excess of what you need to kill the pain. They weren't blissing out, they were taking a break from hell. The psychological pain was so great that even a shot of heroin never completely made it go away. They never associated positive feelings towards the ritual of use, only less pain.
The third reason is that once you remove the psychological reason for the use, even those who are addicted have an easier time getting off.
Absent all the psychological issues, a gentle taper off gets the monkey off your back.
And that is why many thousands of American soldiers did not return from Vietnam as dope fiends. They weren't addicts, they were self-medicating with the only thing available.
) It all depends on the external environment and what baggage you're bringing along. When I was young I did my little bit of drinking either alone or with small groups of friendly acquaintances. (I much preferred pot for the same result.) The bar/party scene leaves me close to a panic attack.
