Living with Heart: From Birth to Death 99 - The Addiction Pandemic
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In this new season, “What is Addiction” we will focus on three main aspects of addiction:
- what addiction is
- how addiction operates
- what recovery entails
The pervasive impact of addiction
The pervasiveness of addiction and its impact makes it a pandemic, perhaps the deadliest human beings have ever experienced.
A pandemic is an outbreak of a disease that occurs over a wide geographic area (continents in the case of addiction.) It affects a significant proportion of the population.
- An epidemic is localized.
- A pandemic refers to “all demographics.”
Tragically, Addiction impairs the addict’s ability to see the impact of their addiction. This impairment is called denial. It prevents the addict from seeing clearly and accurately the consequences of his/her addiction.
We have 30+ million alcoholics in this country and 15+ million people addicted to illegal drugs.
For every one person chemically dependent on alcohol or illegal drugs, 3 to 4 other people are emotionally, mentally, if not physically harmed.
These addictions result in emotional trauma, setting up the high probability of tendency toward addiction.
Adding up the numbers using only the impact of addiction upon 3 people is 135 million people in this nation harmed. When the addicted person is added to the number, the impact is monstrous.