Recovery Durability: Addiction Recurrence Risk Lowers to General Population Levels in Long Term Recovery
Individuals who engage in extended SUD recovery for an average of five years are statistically equal to being diagnosed with a substance use disorder than the average American.
This could help solve the addiction crisis.
Many people misunderstand addiction or severe substance use disorder (SUD) as a condition people eventually can “get over”. This false paradigm is made even worse because unlike other chronic diseases such as cancer or diabetes, addiction does not necessarily have a physical component like a tumor or blood sugar levels we can observe for improvement.
These components in large part are why our healthcare “system” for decades has built ineffective treatment models. Simply put, treating chronic disease with an acute model is bad medicine. Fortunately, this flawed approach is gradually being changed.
However, even with important changes taking place in the treatment space, there is not enough focus industry-wide on using existing data to encourage and reimburse for active ongoing extended recovery. For most chronic diseases, such as cancer, there are long-term covered benefits post-treatment that…
