Cross addiction is the idea that if a person develops a serious drug use disorder (the word for addiction) to one drugs, that person is more likely to acquire a substance use problem to another substance. A double diagnosing often refers to a person who has two distinct and unrelated psychiatric diseases, such as depressed and an alcohol use problem.

Here is a body of data based primarily on anecdotal evidence showing recovered persons are at risk of acquiring substitution addictions to other drugs. As a result, there are several suggestions addressing people with a history of alcoholism not being administered narcotic drugs for pain treatment Cross dependence, people recovering from benzodiazepine issues not drinking alcohol, and so on. These sorts of case study evidence are important for explaining components of a larger, empirically confirmed theoretical notion, but they are the poorest types of information for expressing an overarching idea.

In terms of language sense thinking, the idea of an increase in sensitivity to developing another type of drug use disorder after recovering from a different type of alcohol dependence appears to have some validity. 

It is also compatible with many stringent disease conceptions of addiction in which individuals are unable to make logical decisions about substance use owing to brain abnormalities. The idea that most types of substance use disorders share some common pathways in the brain, such as the reward pathway in the brain, which is predominantly controlled by the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, would support the idea of a neurobiological membrane that is responsible for the weakness to improving a cross addiction.

Unfortunately, until recently, the empirical evidence for the concept of cross addiction was equivocal. The primary prevention viewpoint recognises that some persons will not be completely abstinent from all drugs while in treatment. Some persons may be more likely to relapse if they believe that any substance use equals relapse. The most important thing, in this perspective, is to prevent new dependencies, not all drugs.