It can cost our money, our jobs, our friends, our spouses, our dignity. It can ravage and age our bodies. It can make us stop eating or compel us to eat in binges. It can make us forsake exercise or let our hygiene go. We can lose mental capacity.
Drug dependency can even be fatal.
But unless a person takes action, she will likely continue to deteriorate. People dependent on drugs can fall an awfully long way. Filling the Void Studies show how widespread the country's drug problem has become. A large-scale study of residents of five U.S. cities showed that as many as 1 in 20 American women either abuse or are dependent on drugs. And drug dependency is horribly expensive.