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Addicted on prescription? How long-term users of sleep and tranquilising medications navigate stereotypes about addiction Despite the biomedical disease model, substance use disorders, including those involving prescription drugs like benzo­diazepines, remain stigmatized. Media first portrayed drug-addicted patients in the 1980s as passive victims. Over time, the language of addiction, once used only for illicit drugs, began to include prescription medications, reinforcing negative public perceptions of risk and threat. Dependence on these medications, which already starts after two to four weeks of use, contributes to this stigma. Through discourse analysis of 30 interviews, we examine how long-term users of sedatives in Belgium manage and reinterpret their dependence, reframing their usage as controlled, necessary, iatrogenic, or a conquered addiction.