Why Do Addicts Wait So Long to Get Help?
It seems like we always have questions about addiction, addicts, and why addicts tend to take the actions or inactions that are so indicative of their lifestyle choice. For example, why do drug addicts and alcoholics always wait so long to get help for their substance abuse problems? And why do men always take longer than women do to get help for an addiction? These are the age-old questions, the factors about addiction that always seem to puzzle us to no end.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the data-gathering and administrative body for research and preventive measures on American drug and alcohol addiction, performed a series of studies into the duration of time the average drug addict or alcoholic will wait before seeking treatment for their habit.
Years Spent with No Help
SAMHSA researchers studied and surveyed more than six-hundred thousand addicts who had sought help for addiction in the last year. Researchers explored substance abuse tendencies for each recovering addict and the duration of time each addict had spent before seeking help. According to SAMHSA’s research, the average addict had spent fifteen years as a regular drug user before seeking help.
SAMHSA researchers published the following additional statistics from their findings:
- On average, men spent 16.5 years of regular drug or alcohol abuse before they sought help for their substance abuse problems.
- On average, women spent 13.8 years of regular drug or alcohol abuse before they sought help for their substance abuse problems.
- The addicts who spent the longest period of time not seeking help for their substance problems were alcoholics, with the average alcoholic spending 20.2 years in alcoholism before they sought help.
- The addicts who spent the shortest period of time not seeking help for their substance abuse problems were addicts who were hooked on prescription painkillers. Painkiller addicts only spent 7.8 years stuck in a painkiller addiction before they sought out help.
Professional Opinion on the Issue
According to Pamela S. Hyde, a SAMHSA administrator, and researcher in this project:
“This study shows that the damaging consequences of substance abuse can often be undetected or unacknowledged for many years – undermining many aspects of people's health and well-being, as well as the lives of those around them.”She went on to say that:
“That is why it is essential that we work to prevent substance abuse in the first place, and in instances where it happens, identify the problem and get people the treatment they need as soon as possible so that they, and their families and friends, do not have to endure years of needless suffering.”Why Addicts Refuse to Get Help
Experts estimate that, at any given moment, about eighty to ninety percent of the population of drug addicts and alcoholics in the United States do not want to get help. Throughout an individual addict’s life, they will spend almost all of their time refusing to get help and strongly desiring a continuation of their habit and lifestyle.
Why is this?
The trap of addiction is a terrible one, a fully-encapsulating problem that cripples people both physically and spiritually. Addicts do not want to get help because they do not think that they need to get help. They think they can cope, that they are “functioning addicts” and that rehab is for “All of the other addicts.” In fact, addicts do not want to get help until they hit rock bottom and realize where their life is headed if they do not get help. And we can only hope that they come to that realization before their addiction claims their lives.
The above phenomenon is why intervention is so important and why the family members and loved ones should do their best to convince addicts to get help. This is the only way to create positive change in the addict’s life before their addiction becomes the end of them.
Sources:
- https://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/womens-health/articles/2011/10/06/many-years-pass-before-folks-get-help-for-drugs-alcohol
- http://www.who.int/topics/substance_abuse/en/
- https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-life-expectancy-of-a-drug-addict-How-might-life-expectancy-differ-for-an-alcoholic-or-a-Coke-heroin-or-meth-addict
