Drug-seeking in pain patients is pseudoaddiction that needs more opioids
| Drug-seeking in pain patients is pseudoaddiction that needs more opioids | |
|---|---|
| FALSE | |
| "When patients taking opioids for pain behave like addicts, it is usually "pseudoaddiction," caused by undertreated pain, and the solution is a higher dose." | |
| Domain | Health & Medicine |
| Tactic | Pseudoscience / Junk Science |
| Era | Current |
| First seen | 1989 |
| Origin | A 1989 case report by David Weissman and J. David Haddox, later promoted in materials funded by opioid makers including Purdue Pharma |
| Last reviewed | 2026-10-30 |
| Further reading: books on Health & Medicine | |
In 1989, physicians David Weissman and J. David Haddox described "pseudoaddiction" in the journal Pain, based on a single patient with leukemia. They argued that behaviors resembling addiction, such as asking for more medication, could be a sign that pain was not being treated enough.
In the 1990s and 2000s, opioid makers promoted the idea to doctors. It encouraged prescribers to treat warning signs of addiction by increasing doses.
What the evidence shows
- Weak evidence. A 2015 review in Current Addiction Reports by Marion Greene and R. Andrew Chambers found that the concept had never been tested empirically, and that most publications discussing it had authors with ties to the opioid industry.
- Industry link. Haddox later became a vice president at Purdue Pharma. Purdue's educational materials and speakers' programs taught the concept to doctors.
- Court records. Lawsuits by state attorneys general, including in Massachusetts, cited Purdue's promotion of pseudoaddiction as part of its deceptive marketing.
Why it matters
Pseudoaddiction told doctors to doubt what they were seeing in their patients. It helped fuel a crisis in which hundreds of thousands of Americans died from overdoses involving prescription opioids.
Gaslighting Doctors were taught to read signs of addiction as signs of untreated pain, gaslighting clinicians and patients about what they were seeing. The word comes from Patrick Hamilton's 1938 play Gas Light and the 1944 film Gaslight, in which a husband dims the gas lamps and insists his wife is imagining it. Where the word comes from · More gaslighting cases
Sources
- David E. Weissman and J. David Haddox, "Opioid pseudoaddiction: an iatrogenic syndrome," Pain, vol. 36, no. 3, 1989.
- Marion S. Greene and R. Andrew Chambers, "Pseudoaddiction: Fact or Fiction? An Investigation of the Medical Literature," Current Addiction Reports, 2015.
- Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Purdue Pharma L.P., First Amended Complaint, January 31, 2019.