Drug Addiction and Alcoholism Costs is Staggering.
Continued use of drugs and alcohol is a huge financial black hole from which money never returns.
The cost of drug addiction and alcoholism is absolutely staggering. Many drug rehabs do an exercise whereby they have everybody take out pencil and paper and attempt to calculate everything they have spent on drugs and alcohol. But actually they have them go a step further and have them total up all of the money that was spent due to their addiction in general. This includes incidental costs such as legal fees, wrecked cars, lost homes, and so on. The outcome of such an exercise is always shocking. Every single person underestimates what their addiction has cost them. It is only 
through carefully adding up the full, true impact that their disease has had on them that they can really see what it has cost them. Most people who have been using drugs and alcohol for several years have spent at least a quarter of a million dollars on their disease. Some people who have been using for decades have spent over a million dollars. Unbelievably, some people who do this exercise that have been homeless and living in the streets for years came to learn that they spent more on their addiction than what it costs to live quite comfortably in modest housing. All of this points to an obvious truth about addiction and money.
Continuing to abuse drugs and alcohol is expensive, and the costs accumulate rapidly over time.
