A spiral of increasing use.

Describing the condition.

People who take opioids for pain sometimes find that over time they need to take larger doses. This may be due to an increase in the pain or the development of drug tolerance. Drug tolerance occurs when your body gets used to the medicine you are taking, and your medicine no longer relieves the pain as well as it once did. Many people do not develop a tolerance to opioids. If tolerance does develop, usually small increases in the dose or a change in the kind of medicine will help relieve the pain. When you continue the cycle of increasing dosage to achieve a level of relief, you can develop a Tolerance-based Addiction.