In looking up some numbers for a recent post I put up on TakePart, I uncovered some amazing addiction and drug abuse statistics (most from 2007, so they’re probably higher by now).

Addiction statistics highlights:

• Slightly more than half of Americans surveyed indicated that they are current drinkers (I thought it’d be higher) – Meaning there were about 126 million drinkers in the country. About 57.8 million had consumed more than 5 drinks in one sitting in the month prior to the survey.
• It is estimated that more than 30 million people in the US meet criteria for some addictive disorder including drug addiction, sex addiction, gambling addiction, and food addiction (added from SAMHSA statistics about individual addictions)!!
• More than 15 million of those are only dependent on alcohol!!
• The next drug on the list is, you guessed it, marijuana with 3.9 million dependent individuals!!!
• Of the more than 23 million individuals who needed drug treatment, only 10% sought help (2.4 million).
• The most  staggering of all numbers – The cumulative estimated cost of addictive behavior (including overeating) in the United States = $500 Billion!!! Almost half of our current budget deficit!!!

I don’t know about you, but these numbers leave me a little in awe of just how big this problem really is. Given some of the other treatment-cost posts I’ve written (see here), I once again reiterate the notion that if we shifted our focus to drug-treatment, we’d save lives and money all at the same time.