Drug abuse is when you use legal or illegal substances in ways you shouldn’t. You might take more than the regular dose of pills or use someone else’s prescription. You may abuse drugs to feel good, ease stress, or avoid reality. But usually, you’re able to change your unhealthy habits or stop using altogether. Addiction is when you can’t stop. Not when it puts your health in danger. Not when it causes financial, emotional, and other problems for you or your loved ones. That urge to get and use drugs can fill up every minute of the day, even if you want to quit.

  This viewpoint offers several potential avenues for the remediation of drug abuse. One is simply to bring to bear alternatives that are more powerful in directing choice than are those operating when drug abuse is occurring, so that the basics of choice, for example generalized matching, can operate to retard drug abuse rather than promote it.