Use of opiates, meanwhile, changed medical thinking. Usually, a patient demanding ever-higher doses of a drug would be proof that the drug wasn’t working. But in opiate pain treatment, it was taken as proof that the doctor hadn’t yet prescribed enough. Indeed, some doctors came to believe that a pain patient demanding higher doses was likely to be exhibiting signs of “pseudoaddiction,” looking for a dose large enough to kill the pain—the cure for which was more opiates.
