The Problem
Addiction is America’s number one public health problem by an enormous margin, far outstripping the other big killers — heart disease, stroke, and cancer put together. Sufferers number in the millions. This includes not just one or two addictions but the eight deadly hang-ups: alcoholism (29 million), drug addiction (13 million), sex addiction (12 million), nicotine addiction (61 million), addictive eating (66 million), addictive gambling (18 million), and two classes of mental addiction, depression (18 million) and anxiety (3 million).
Although that would appear to yield a grand total of 220 million addicts out of a total U.S. adult population of 203 million, that actual number of addicts is quite a bit lower; because of the factor of cross-addiction. A significant percentage of addicts are hooked, not on just one, but on two or more of these big addictions. For instance, many depressives are hooked on psychotropic drugs, many alcoholics are also hooked on cocaine, and very many who are hooked on any of the above are also addictive smokers.
For a good general fix on the overall scope of the addiction problem, you can assume a cross-addiction factor of 2.5, meaning most people addicted to any one of the big eight are addicted to two or three. This gives a figure of 88 million in the U.S. today, probably a good conservative estimate.
With the way the addiction problem currently is, it presents a striking irony that the world’s most technically advanced society suffers at a pandemic level from a plague that can only be combated effectively by a spiritual program, uncomplicated by medical or psychiatric interference, and communicated by amateurs (addicts themselves) rather than by professionals.