ABSTRACT
For many people it is hard to understand how someone can become addicted to drugs. Why can some people use drugs like cocaine or heroin in an apparently controlled manner for long periods of time, while others report that they became “addicted with the first dose”? Perhaps the fundamental problem with this question lies with the definition of an addiction. During the past thirty years the scientific understanding and public attitudes and beliefs towards what actually constitutes an addiction have radically changed. As a result of these changes, the word addiction is one of the most common words in everyday usage that can mean different things to different people.
