I get so angry when sometimes well-intentioned people will make statements to the effect of only 5%, 10% of the people make it in addiction recovery. How disheartening for somebody who’s trying to turn their life around to statements like that. Why not focus on the fact that addiction treatment works.
Just today I attended a conference and Dr. Lewis Baxter Sr was the keynote speaker. He is the president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine known in the field as ASAM. He provided some rather heartening statistics. But these have to be qualified. He was speaking of people who have gone through a “full treatment experience”. A full treatment experience includes:
1. Detoxification
2. Rehabilitation
3. Maintenance
These are patients who received a full assessment, and an accurate diagnosis of their condition. They’d gone through proper detoxification and/or medical maintenance. Rehabilitation – means therapy and addiction counseling. Aftercare and continuing care refers to ongoing treatment with social support such as a 12 step program and/or continued therapy throughout the year.
Two separate peer-reviewed, empirical studies* showed these statistics:
For people who I gone through a full treatment experience:
The general population at a recovery rate of 77% at one year.
For those who had gone through detoxification in rehab only the recovery rate was 33% at one year.
For those who underwent detox only, the recovery rate was less than 10%.
Now before I get a ton of e-mails saying those statistics don’t sound right I ask you to look at the qualifications very carefully. For instance, in my experience as an addiction therapist when I see a patient who has relapsed, and I inquire about their follow-through on aftercare about 90% of them say that they did not follow through. That explains the big drop in the recovery rate to only 33% when continuing care recommendations are not followed after they leave their initial phase of treatment.
I can also anecdotally tell you that I have had patients tell me ‘I’ve been to 10 treatments’ and when asked how long each treatment was, they say ‘about two days’. There is an erroneous belief for some that detox is the same as treatment. Detox is certainly not treatment it as simply medical stabilization.
Now the one thing I firmly believe about statistics is that when it comes to addiction recovery they are inherently accurate. I believe that it is the individual’s action determine their success in addiction recovery not the random allocation percentages are statistics.
*(Gaber,Davidson,1992; Mclellan 2002)
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A great article – McLellan has been a great supporter of maintenance for a long time. I’m hoping that the rest of the industry will catch up soon. We’ve recently written an article on the benefits of even quarterly (as in 4 times a year) check-ups. I do little other than statistics in addiction research and I can tell you that length of treatment is one of the best predictors out there for success (along with employment).
Recovery is very hard and I think one thing that will play a big role in those statistics is how many people you had as support, if you have none or even as little as 2 then it might be lower. But if you have 10..15..or even more the statistic will probably go up. It will probably change a lot based on who those people supporting you are and how much they mean to you. For all of these reason I really hate to look at statistics, because stats don’t give you the full picture.
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Thanks Adi, It was an eye opener to hear him speak. I am a bit old school and there is certainly more resistance out there than there should be with evidence backing up new findings.
Anybody with self confidence can only able to recover from the Addiction problem.
It is so sad, but I think this is the pure truth. Sometimes the pure truth hurts ! Nice post Bill
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Great statistics. I also knew about 5% or 10 % fact. But this statistics is fully reverse of my thinking which is good. But the main fact is full treatment not only rehab or not only detox.
This is a good article. Hopefully it will change some people’s thinking about addiction recovery. I was already aware from personal experience but it’s good you’re spreading the word.
you metioned 77 % recovery at one year but you failed to mention the recovery rate for 5 years. I believe it is much lower for these same people. Many if they have the money have to go through several long term programs.
Then there are the programs that are available to the poor. Not so good. I believe it only works when one decides to change their direction because they wake up and realize the way they have been going is not wortking and they truly want change.
The 5% was at the 5-year benchmark. I was able to find this on 1-year benchmark for alcohol addiction.
The Harvard Mental Health Letter, from The Harvard Medical School, stated quite plainly:
On their own
There is a high rate of recovery among alcoholics and addicts, treated and untreated. According to one estimate, heroin addicts break the habit in an average of 11 years. Another estimate is that at least 50% of alcoholics eventually free themselves although only 10% are ever treated. One recent study found that 80% of all alcoholics who recover for a year or more do so on their own, some after being unsuccessfully treated. When a group of these self-treated alcoholics was interviewed, 57% said they simply decided that alcohol was bad for them. Twenty-nine percent said health problems, frightening experiences, accidents, or blackouts persuaded them to quit. Others used such phrases as “Things were building up” or “I was sick and tired of it.” Support from a husband or wife was important in sustaining the resolution.
Treatment of Drug Abuse and Addiction — Part III, The Harvard Mental Health Letter, Volume 12, Number 4, October 1995, page 3.
(See Aug. (Part I), Sept. (Part II), Oct. 1995 (Part III).)