More than 48 million Americans are living with a substance use disorder right now, according to the best estimates of the nation’s premier health agencies. Only about 5 percent of them are getting any kind of help for the condition. It’s easy to shrug off such dismal statistics — to assume, as many people do, that addiction is untreatable or that if effective therapies exist, most people with addictions have no interest in trying them. But both of those assumptions rest on fallacies. In fact, a growing roster of treatments (medications, behavioral therapies, counseling and other supports) have proved just as effective at managing addiction as statins are at managing cholesterol or aspirin is at preventing heart attacks. Experience suggests that many more people would make use of these treatments if only they were easier to access: In other countries and in many U.S. states, when the barriers to addiction treatment have been lowered, treatment uptake has increased, and overdose rates have fallen. Still, a vast chasm exists between effective addiction medicine and the people who most need it.
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