Effective treatment is time-consuming and expensive. These illnesses are cyclic, Brown added. The affected person may be well for a time and then may suffer a relapse. In addition to being unemployable due to alcoholism or habitual drug use, people with chemical dependencies also run a high risk of sustaining physical injuries or getting caught up in the criminal justice system, said Vicki Decker, coordinator for the Northwest Frontier Addiction Technology Transfer Center in the Oregon Department of Human Resources. In fact, the opposite is more often the case.
Dependency causes the individual to fall into poverty.
People become chemically dependent for all kinds of reasons, Decker explained. Many people become alcoholics or addicted to drugs because it's their way of coping with a life trauma. Or, in the case of alcohol, some people have family predispositions to alcohol abuse, she said. In most cases, average adults who are drinking don't reach that stage of debilitation where they are losing jobs until their disease has progressed quite a way. As a rule an alcoholic will quit a job before he or she is fired.