The Consequences of Long-Term Heroin Addiction and the Effects of Treatment

Dr. Yih-Ing Hser and colleagues at UCLA followed 581 men with heroin addiction who were admitted to treatment through the California criminal justice system between 1962 and 1964. The researchers attempted to contact each man every 10 years to ask about his drug use, treatment participation, health and social circumstances, and criminal activity during the preceding 10 years. Urine testing was used to the extent possible to confirm current drug status at each interview. The most dramatic feature of this graph is the number of deaths. Half of the participants died during the 33-year study. Throughout, participants died at rates 50 to 100 times what would have been expected if they had not been addicted. Also striking are the relationships between abstinence and the other categories. More than 50 percent of the men reported that they had been abstinent in 1956. That portion fell to less than 10 percent in 1964, while the portion of men Source: Archives of General Psychiatry 58:503-508, 2001. Copyright 2001, American Medical Association.Used with permission.