The statistics for recovery from heroin addiction?

SROS 5-year follow-up of a national treatment sample. The Services Research Outcomes Study (Office of Applied Studies [OAS], 1998) reported a mortality rate of 9.1 percent (277 deaths among a targeted sample of 3,047) over 5 years posttreatment. The study was based on a national probability sample of 99 treatment programs and 3,047 patients discharged from these programs in 1989 and 1990. Treatment program modalities were hospital inpatient, residential, outpatient methadone (including detoxification and maintenance), and outpatient nonmethadone programs. The study conducted record abstraction of these patients during 1994 and follow-up interviews during 1995-96. The ages of the patients ranged from 15 to 60 years at treatment discharge in 1991. Based on a fairly small number of deaths, 277, when compared with the number of deaths in the total population over 5 years, these substance abusers had estimated mortality rates that were 7.3 times the general population of similar age, gender, and race; the death rate was 8 times for white males, 18 times of that for white females, 5 times for black males, and 7 times for black females.

Patterns of abstinence and relapse (N = 1,042) at the 5-year follow-up were as follows: Approximately 18 percent had been abstinent without relapse, 14 percent relapsed once and then stopped use, 27 percent relapsed and never stopped using, and 41 percent relapsed, stopped use, and relapsed again. About 32 percent reentered treatment after DATOS discharge (Hser, Grella, Shen, & Anglin, 2000). Additionally, at the 5-year follow-up interview, 66.4 percent were not using marijuana, 64.5 percent were not using cocaine, and 77.6 percent were not using heroin (compared with the respective rates of 47.5, 30.6, and 59.2 percent during the year before treatment).