Please read and pass on.

[Gandhi]

FItbitters 

Im not sure if it really was a global survey or study but I know one thing for sure that in the past 2 decades of my Medical practise ,patients of these addictions have increased many folds and I dont see only these types of people / patients.

Almost five percent of the world's adult population (240 million people) have an alcohol use disorder and more than 20 percent (one billion people) smoke tobacco, new research on global addictive disorders has found.

The report estimates the number of people injecting drugs at around 15 million worldwide.

"Bringing all this data together has been very challenging but having this global snapshot in one accessible resource should prove invaluable for policymakers and researchers," said the report's lead author Linda Gowing, associate professor at University of Adelaide in South Australia.

The "Global Statistics on Addictive Behaviours: 2014 Status Report" shows that there are huge regional differences in use of addictive drugs.

The heaviest drinkers are in Eastern Europe where 13.6 litres of alcohol is consumed per head of population each year, followed by Northern Europe at 11.5 litres.

Central, Southern and Western Asia have the lowest consumption at 2.1 litres. Eastern Europe also has the most smokers at 30 percent of adults, closely followed by Oceania at 29.5 percent, Western Europe at 28.5 percent, and Africa at 14 percent.

North and Central America with the Caribbean have the highest rates of injecting drug use at 0.8 percent, which is more than twice the rate in Northern Europe at 0.3 percent.

The findings also showed that that the harm to society from legal drugs is many times the harm from illicit drugs.

For the study, online sources of global, regional and national information on prevalence and major harms relating to alcohol use, tobacco use, unsanctioned psychoactive drug use and gambling were identified through expert review and assessed.

The findings were detailed in the journal Addiction.

[EdsonFitbit]

Wow! Those numbers scare. Glad to don't belong to those statistics.

[WendyB]

That is pretty scary.

[SunsetRunner]

Good am addicted to water.

Less good for the ones who are addicted to the bad things.

[DennisW852o]

it's very scary

[TaniaRyl]

Hi @Gandhi 

dependent people, as for me, are sick, have a weak psyche, and a weak instinct for self-preservation. because addiction slowly kills. such people need help, it is very difficult to cope on their own, especially if the psyche is weak

[SunsetRunner]

@TaniaRyl - Addiction is now recognized as a disease, not a personal weakness. Many strong people who have managed to control their addictions would take offense a the idea that they are weak or have a weak psyche. It takes a strong person to fight an addiction. 

[TaniaRyl]

@SunsetRunner 

I can’t forget your words, I didn’t think that it should be offensive ...

I was not talking about personal weakness, I meant mental problems. this is precisely the disease of the psyche, and the narcologist psychiatrist treats it

I think it is wrong to perceive mental problems as something shameful. a problem psyche, a weak psyche, also has its own state dynamics in time. and of course such people can live a normal life

just often they need understanding and some conditions for normal functioning...

thanks for understanding