A patient suffering from chronic pain who uses opioids
That, at least in my personal experience as a legitimate chronic pain patient, opioid dependence is significantly different from addiction in that I have never, in 20+ years, needed to increase my dosage, once we'd reached a therapeutic dosage. The current focus on addiction and abuse has been hugely harmful to the legitimate chronic pain patient. Due to the over swing of the control pendulum, we have been deprived of our medications, lost our doctors and been treated like criminals.
This has caused not only physical harm but psychological as well. Just look at the surge in suicides by despondent pain patients. I suggest that a portion of the rise in heroin usage comes from desperate pain patients who cannot acquire their legal prescriptions and that many of the overdoses are pain patients either unfamiliar with heroin or deliberately OD'ing. I can't prove these statements but they are my experience and the experience of many pain patients nationwide.