Am I dependent?

There is no quiz on this page, no score at the end, and nowhere to enter an email address. Nobody can diagnose you from a web page and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What follows is five things people tend to notice, in roughly the order they notice them.

Read them and see how many you recognise. That is the whole method, and it is more accurate than a questionnaire, because you are the only person with the information.

1. The amount that worked doesn’t work anymore.

This is tolerance, and it is the first thing to appear. It is not you being weak or your supply being poor quality. Your nervous system has adapted to the compound being there, and it is doing what it is supposed to do. It matters because the obvious response — take more — is also the thing that deepens the adaptation.

What to do about it: Nothing dramatic. But this is the cheapest moment to stop, and it gets more expensive from here. If you are going to act, this is where acting is easiest.

2. The gap between doses is shrinking.

Watch the schedule rather than the amount. People notice the amount going up because it costs money; almost nobody notices the interval collapsing. Once you are taking something to get through a specific part of the day, and then an earlier part of the day, the pattern has changed even if the total has not.

What to do about it: Write down when you took it, for a week, without trying to change anything. Most people find the honest record does not match what they believed.

3. You’ve thought about what happens if you run out.

Not "I would be annoyed" — the specific, slightly cold feeling of realising you are low, and the reorganising that follows. Checking supply. Ordering early. Keeping some back. This is the clearest single sign, and it usually arrives long before anyone would use the word addiction.

What to do about it: Take it seriously in proportion to how familiar it felt to read. If you recognised it immediately, that is the answer to the question this page is asking.

4. You’ve tried to stop and started again because stopping felt worse than continuing.

This is the important one, and it is the one that gets misread. When you stop, what comes back is usually worse than what you originally had — anxiety worse than your original anxiety, pain worse than your original pain. From the inside that feels like proof that you needed it. It is usually withdrawal, and it is temporary.

What to do about it: This is the point at which doing it alone stops being a good plan, and for some compounds stops being safe. With alcohol, benzodiazepines and phenibut, stopping suddenly is itself dangerous. See stopping, below.

5. You’re taking it to feel normal rather than to feel better.

The reason changed and you probably did not notice when. You started taking it for something — anxiety, pain, energy, sleep — and at some point the purpose became avoiding how you feel without it. Same substance, same amount, completely different situation.

What to do about it: This is the definition, in ordinary language. Not a diagnosis, and not a moral fact about you. It is a description of a state that has treatments.

So what does it mean if several of those landed?

That you have a physical dependence, most likely, and that it is easier to deal with now than it will be later. It does not mean you are an addict, that you have ruined anything, or that you need to reorganise your identity around this. Dependence is a physiological state, it is extremely common, and it is treatable.

It also does not mean you have to stop today. It means the decision is worth making deliberately rather than by drift.

The one thing that is genuinely urgent

For some compounds, stopping suddenly is the dangerous part. Alcohol, benzodiazepines and phenibut can produce a withdrawal severe enough to cause seizures. If you are using one of those regularly, do not simply stop — read this first. With opioids, including kratom and tianeptine, stopping is not usually dangerous but it is hard, and there is medication that helps.

Where to go from here

• Stopping phenibut — including what to do if you have no doctor.
• Stopping kratom.
• Stopping tianeptine.
• If something is going wrong right now.

If what you are using is not on that list, the general route is the same: Poison Control on 1-800-222-1222 will advise you, free, at any hour, and they are not law enforcement. SAMHSA on 1-800-662-4357 refers to treatment regardless of insurance.

We do not collect anything on this site. There is no analytics on these pages, no cookie, no account, and no address to put yourself on. Nothing you read here is recorded against you, and there is nobody to follow up with you afterwards — which also means this page cannot be a substitute for talking to a person.