You’re not generally wrong but I think it’s worth keeping in mind that this is going to depend on a combination of all sorts of factors in your personal health

You’re not generally wrong but I think it’s worth keeping in mind that this is going to depend on a combination of all sorts of factors in your personal health profile and the dosage you’ve been taking. It’s not just the addiction that is problematic. It’s the long-term consequences of the chronic side effects. We all know you need to sleep and to eat. This medication makes it harder to do both of those activities if not managed properly and thoroughly. Combine a failure to do that with long-term usage (abuse) and you've got a recipe for permanent damage on your hands that can cyclically reinforce that dependence. Here’s an anecdote. I did a group project with a guy in college who I got to talking with about it. He had one of these nightmare stories. He said he had to stop taking it because he was absolutely strung out. I asked him about his dosage and he told me he had been taking 80mg XR/day. I was unaware they even made dosages that high. He said that he didn’t realize it at the time but he just kept chasing the initial feeling (seems he didn’t understand the concept of tolerance), and his doctor responded by repeatedly titrating up his dosage. He was at that max dosage for about a year and a half. He said when he stopped he went through a months long phase of extreme depression and physical discomfort like he has never experienced in his life before. He shared some pretty brutal stuff with me. He said that it had been a year and he still didn’t feel like his old self. He said it was like his attention span was even shorter than before the medication and at this point he wasn’t sure if it would ever be the same.