[Identification in drug addiction]

There is a need to define the field of drug addiction from both the theoretical and the practical point of view, but any attempt to do so encounters difficulties that are inherent in the many types of approach as well as in the polymorphism of drug addiction. The difficulties are also due to the present day consumption of pills which is very high both among members of our "square" society and in the marginal fringes, and occurs in and outside the field of drug addiction proper -- the guide being here the progressive increase of doses. The modes of use are not sufficient to determine the presence of drug addiction: the drug substance must have a psychism-oriented tropism; the increase in the dose of a non-psychotropic product is therefore a matter of hypochondria and not of drug addiction. The means of administering a drug also occupies a privileged place, in so far as the intravenous method suffices alone to label non-medical use as drug addiction. It is the hallucinogens that, despite the absence of physical dependence, most frequently pose the question of the definition of drug addiction, in view of the ritual dimension and the transgressive significance of the absorption of these products, even at relatively moderate doses, and hallucinogens pose this question all the more since their use emerges from a sub-cultural environment that produces typical drug addiction, namely intravenous heroin addiction. The latter does not raise the question of definition, but is used as the basis for a drug addiction referential system.