If you only learned about addiction from the news, you'd think recovery was rare — a lucky exception to an otherwise grim rule. The data tell a different story.
In 2017, a team led by John Kelly at Massachusetts General Hospital published a nationally representative survey of American adults. About 9 percent said they had once had a significant problem with alcohol or drugs and no longer did. That's more than 20 million people. And they found their way out by many routes: some through treatment, some through mutual-help groups, some through medication, and a large share with no formal help at all. Other large studies have found that most people who meet criteria for a substance use disorder at some point in their lives eventually stop meeting them.
None of this makes recovery easy, and it doesn't mean everyone gets there. Addiction still kills far too many people. But the dominant story — that it's a hopeless, lifelong downward spiral — is wrong. Recovery is common. It happens to ordinary people, in all kinds of ways. There are millions of people living proof that it's possible, and most of them you'd never guess.
✦ Quote
"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."
— James Baldwin, "As Much Truth As One Can Bear," The New York Times Book Review (1962)
◎ Prompt
Think of someone you know who got through something you once thought was impossible to survive — addiction or otherwise. What did they have that you could borrow? Write it down.
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