ABSTRACT
The World Health Organization’s (WHO) definition of drug dependence is ‘a state, psychic and sometimes physical, resulting from the interaction between a living organism and a drug characterized by behavioural and other responses that always include a compulsion to take the drug on a continuous or periodic basis in order to experience its psychic effects and sometimes to avoid the discomfort of its absence’. More recent definitions include the WHO’s ICD-10 and the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for Substance-Related Disorders, which emphasize the importance of loss of control over drug use and its consequences in limiting other, non-drug-related activities, in addition to tolerance and physical dependence.
