Drug abuse
Drug addiction
Substance abuse
Comparison of the perceived harm for various psychoactive drugs from a poll among medical psychiatrists specialized in addiction treatment[1]
Drug addiction is widely considered a pathological state. The disorder of addiction involves the progression of acute drug use to addiction, behavior becomes completely geared towards seeking the drug, even though addicts report the euphoria is not as intense as it once was. Despite the differing actions of drugs during acute use, the final pathway of addiction is the same. Another aspect of drug addiction is a term which has been used to describe patient behaviors that may occur when pain is effectively treated.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM-IV-TR doesn’t use the word addiction at all. Instead it has a section about Substance dependence
"When an individual persists in use of alcohol or other drugs despite problems related to use of the substance, substance dependence may be diagnosed. Compulsive and repetitive use may result in tolerance to the effect of the drug of choice on the neuroplasticity of the neurons found in the reward
