yeah, but I would be very shocked if it were the first time that he had tried anything at all that would get him high. In other words I am guessing that at very least it was addict behavior.
For example, I am an alcoholic (albeit a sober one). I have never consumed Listerine but if I did it would be alcoholic behavior. Not mouthwash abuse. I still think that the Abusive/responsible drinker is a false framing of things and ultimately serves to keep people ashamed and not getting help. My $.02.
Certainly - and addiction behavior is itself a useful term that describes a range of activities. It would be a mistake to use any of these terms to replace others when they would be better used to describe the whole range of the problem.
I think “substance abuse” is just one example of an annoying trend toward replacing specific words with general ones. You used to buy a computer from an electronics company and run a program on it. Later, you bought hardware and ran software on it. Now you buy a system from a technology provider and implement a solution. Eventually, you’ll buy an object from an entity and start a process. I’d also mention the use of “health care provider” instead of physician, but that is a concerted attempt to reduce the professional stature of physicians by lumping them in with nurses, medical technicians, therapists and the guy who cleans out the bedpans.
But then what do you call it when people abuse something who aren’t addicted to it ?
Recreation.
Okay, I was kind of excluding idiots from that pool of people.
But there is a difference in behaviour, no? You can have two alcoholics, one of whom has been clean and sober for ten years, and the other who regularly goes on a bender.
Saying that they’re both addicted to alcohol may be an accurate medical statement, but it does not mean that they are both abusing alcohol.
The terms “alcohol abuse” and “substance abuse” describe a behaviour that is not necessarily captured by the word “addiction.”
Recreation and abuse aren’t the same thing.
Natural vs. unnatural makes little sense. Mostly, the world over, governments distinguish “good drugs” from “bad drugs” by one single criterium: the bad drugs are the ones they can’t tax because the market’s underground (usually because of illegality).
Still, smoking a weed that grows freely upon this planet, makes somewhat more sense to me than swallowing a weird ass pill that some flunked out chem student bollocksed up in his attic. I guess that puts me in the “natural” camp, somewhat. Then again, my country of residence probably has something to do with it, as well. 
I don’t see where I said it was. I was just answering your question in a general sense.
But this :
Does look like equating the two to me.
You have two people who drink wine, neither is alcoholic. One drinks a glass during dinner. The other binges on enough to render himself unconscious and damage his health; not because he’s addicted, but because he chooses to for one reason or another. Both are using alcohol for recreation, but only one is abusing. Calling both “recreation” loses an important distinction in what is happening.
What term do we use to describe someone who abuses “substances”, but isn’t necessarily an addict ? “Substance abuser” is a usefully broad term to describe a broad spectrum of behavior.
Well, for what it’s worth, I agree with you. It’s semantics at this point and sorry if I made it confusing.
Yes, but substance-free is still used. I had a friend in college who was an RA for the substance-free dorm. It was downright ethereal.