Addiction Statistics

Addiction statistics are grim. It’s not a pleasant topic, but more people need to know these harsh facts. The statistics below come from the Addiction Center website – please click on the link and read the whole article. As the first statistic shows, the great majority of people with an addiction problem don’t receive treatment — in fact, only one out of ten receive treatment.

To understand the full scope of the problem, statistics which relate to deaths caused by addiction are skewed by how deaths are reported. If someone with an addiction problem has a car crash while under the influence, it’s probably reported that the person died due to injuries caused by the crash. In reality, it’s likely the person was under the influence and died because of her addiction problem. If a cocaine addict dies from a heart attack during a binge, there’s a good chance the death won’t be categorized as caused by cocaine addiction. If an opiate addict stumbles while under the influence, falls and hits their head hard enough to die, opiate addiction won’t likely be reported as the cause of death. You might see this as a stretch, but it’s just something to keep in mind. The number of reported addiction deaths are alarming enough without stretching, it’s just more alarming to think about all the lives, unreported in statistics, cut short by addiction, a treatable condition.

• Almost 21 million Americans have at least one addiction, yet only 10% of them receive treatment.
• Drug overdose deaths have more than tripled since 1990.
• From 1999 to 2017, more than 700,000 Americans died from overdosing on a drug.
• Alcohol and drug addiction cost the U.S. economy over $600 billion every year.
• In 2017, 34.2 million Americans committed DUI, 21.4 million under the influence of alcohol and 12.8 million under the influence of drugs.
• About 20% of Americans who have depression or an anxiety disorder also have a substance use disorder.
• More than 90% of people who have an addiction started to drink alcohol or use drugs before they were 18 years old.
• Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 are most likely to use addictive drugs.

• Every year, worldwide, alcohol is the cause of 5.3% of deaths (or 1 in every 20).
• About 300 million people throughout the world have an alcohol use disorder.
• On average, 30 Americans die every day in an alcohol-related car accident, and six Americans die every day from alcohol poisoning.
• About 88,000 people die as a result of alcohol every year in the United States.
• About 6% of American adults (about 15 million people) have an alcohol use disorder, but only about 7% of Americans who are addicted to alcohol ever receive treatment.
• Men between the ages of 18 and 25 are most likely to binge drink and become alcoholics.
• In 2017, approximately 2.3 million Americans between the ages of 12 and 17 and 2.4 million Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 started to drink alcohol.
• In 2018, a historically-low percentage of American high school students reported drinking alcohol. Only 18% of 10^th graders and 30% of 12^th graders admitted to drinking underage in 2018 compared to 25% of 10^th graders and 39% of 12^th graders in 2013.

In recent years opiate addiction has been in the news. The pandemic pushed stories like opiate addiction out of the news, but it’s still a huge problem. There have been a concerted effort across the nation to treat opiate addiction. Drugs like Suboxone have helped tremendously, although Suboxone is not very effective without addiction treatment and an understanding/acceptance of behavioral changes necessary to recover.

• About 130 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose.
• From 1999 to 2017, 399,230 Americans lost their lives to opioids.
• In 2017 alone, 47,600 fatal overdoses occurred in America which involved at least one opioid.
• In 2017, doctors issued 191,218,272 opioid prescriptions, a slight decline from the 200,000,000 opioid prescriptions which they issued every year from 2006 to 2016.
• Since 1999, the sale of opioid painkillers has skyrocketed by 300%.
• About 20% to 30% of people who take prescription opioids misuse them.
• 2 million Americans misused prescription opioids for the first time in 2017.
• About 10% of people who misuse prescription opioids become addicted to opioids.
• Approximately 2.1 million Americans have an opioid use disorder.
• About 5% of people with an opioid use disorder will try heroin.