It depends on how you define addiction. If you are utilizing common vernacular then it’s open to semantic interpretation. If you are utilizing it in a medical sense, then no. Medically it’s typically referred to as either acute or chronic substance use disorder.

Addiction in medicine typically requires a few traits for diagnoses. You usually have to present with one or multiple characteristics of addiction like compulsive behaviour, cognitive/metabolic adaptation, tolerance and withdrawal, and most importantly… harm to the patient.

If you are dependent on a drug because it reduces harm, then it’s not an addiction, that’s just taking medicine. Persistently taking drugs that harm your health, relationships, or negatively affect your ability to engage with society is when substance abuse comes into play.

Now there are scenarios where prescribers have to weigh the overall benefit against the potential for harm. Things like chemotherapy are implicitly harmful to the body in certain ways, but less so than the cancer it is treating for. Which is why healthcare providers have to keep in mind total outcomes for their patients on an individual basis.