Talk:Psychological dependence

New version of article
As you can see I´ve made an new version of this article. The major thing I´ve changed is that I´ve removed the discussion about "addiction vs dependence". In my opinion that debate should be written about in the major categories i.e addiction or substance dependence and not in the subcategory of dependence. Other than that my version is more a extension of the old article. Hope you like it, if you have any feedback feel free to message me or edit the article.Laboz125 (talk) 19:02, 8 March 2019 (UTC)


 * The article clearly describes physical/neurological dependence, not ‘psychological dependence’. And “psychological dependence” is arguably a completely outdated misnomer just like this still persistent myth about “physical addiction”. These are nonsense terms. Dexedream (talk) 10:00, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Unlabeled section added by an IP
"Of the various things that a person can be psychologically dependent on, "opiates, benzodiazepines, barbiturates, alcohol, and nicotine" are among them."

I know for a fact that 4 out of these 5 cause PHYSICAL dependencies that can have very serious health risks. To not at least mention that is not only intellectually dishonest, but dangerous to anyone looking into certain medications that may be suggested by physicians, namely Benzodiazepines and Opiates. Benzo and alcohol withdrawal can have FATAL consequences, to downplay this as only a mere "psychological dependence" is criminally negligent. On top of that, one of the drugs (if you want to call it a drug) that people usually become psychologically dependent on, Marijuana, isn't even mentioned. Also, caffeine. I'm going to extract the sentence and any links leading to these false presumptions. I may butcher the page in the process so a senior editor might need to clean it up but again, whoever wrote this isn't just ignorant, they're complete imbeciles to leave out the two most common psychological dependencies in order to highlight those that have actual physical consequences.

184.99.171.36 (talk) 17:02, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Psychological dependence
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Psychological dependence's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Cellular basis": From Reward system:  From Opioid use disorder:  From NF-κB:  From Methylphenidate:  

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 08:37, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Reference 6
In reference 6 it is written: While physical dependence and withdrawal occur with some drugs of abuse (opiates, ethanol), these phenomena are not useful in the diagnosis of addiction because they do not occur with other drugs of abuse (cocaine, amphetamine).

I´m almost a hundred percent sure that cocaine and amphetamine both produces withdrawal and some physical dependence. Is this source really reliable? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Laboz125 (talk • contribs) 20:01, 5 October 2018 (UTC)


 * You are right: the source is not reliable. It also quotes an outdated version of ICD-10. Not compatible with WP:MEDRS. Should be deleted. --Saidmann (talk) 19:45, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

The whole concept of “psychological dependence” is complete BS
“Psychological dependence” is a physical dependence… Just because it’s neurological doesn’t mean it’s not still ‘physical’. It’s just not somatic is all. The term ‘psychological dependence’ is a complete misnomer and implies that its fictive or based on the user’s perception. There’s different kinds of physical dependencies but that’s still what this would fall under; physical dependence. All drug addictions are “mental” and all dependencies are physical. What is rhetoric about “physical addiction“ or “psychological dependencies” are all outdated concepts which don’t even hold up under the most marginal degrees of scrutiny. Dexedream (talk) 09:55, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

"Psychological addiction" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Psychological_addiction&redirect=no Psychological addiction] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached. Jay 💬 07:34, 5 April 2024 (UTC)