A brief description of terms might be useful to help distinguish what the terms addicted, dependent and tolerant mean. An addicted person craves a drug and continues to take it so that they can basically drop out of life, not be a part of it. A dependent person is a pain sufferer who needs and uses a drug only to relieve their pain. The sufferer is not psychologically dependent but like the addict, will go through withdrawal upon discontinuance of the drug. However, both an addicted person and a dependent person can become tolerant to a drug.
Tolerance is defined as the drug's reduced effectiveness when used continually over time.
The usual pattern for an addicted person is a continual upping of a drug when they become tolerant to get the same feeling, high or rush that they got when it was first taken. For the dependent person, the dosage must be increased because the sufferer no longer experiences the same relief at the lower dose. This needs to be done in order have effective control over the pain. Most physicians have chronic pain sufferers taper off a drug in a matter of days. In my opinion, it is much easier on the body to do it much more slowly.