According to the National institute on drug abuse (NIDA) about 30% of people relapse within 6 months of therapy. Many other researchers and authorities in the field mention figures of 40%-60% (Simpson, Joe & Lehman; Bell; Peters, etc).
Dr. George Koob, a professor with the Scripps Research Institute goes even further to show that approximately 80% of the addicts and alcoholics who experience detox return to drug or alcohol use within a year!
No one seems to research the percentage of relapses after 1 year but if we follow this trend, that percentage of relapse increases over time, it would not be surprising to find that 90% of drug addicts will relapse at some point in their life.
These are staggering figures. Imagine how our life would be if everything we tried to do in life had such a success ratio. Imagine if this was the success ratio of a plane flight. How many people would dare to fly? Actually this reminds me that in the early days of flying. Up until the 1950’s, the success ratios of flights were pretty low, maybe as low as the addiction treatment ratios nowadays, and the reason was simple: the planes were not designed properly.
The same stands true here. If something repeatedly fails it is obviously missing some key element and the methodology has to be changed. And this unfortunately applies to every single addiction treatment used in the moden world today.
Causes And Treatment Of Addictions 