Veterans Day 2022: Recognizing Veterans in Recovery from Addiction
Paugus Bay Behavioral Health
Hope. Heal. Thrive. Substance use disorder and Mental Health Outpatient Treatment in New Hampshire.
In the United States today, there are over 15 million veterans.
A veteran is anyone who has served in one of the branches of the U.S. military: the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, the Marines, the Coast Guard. These important citizens are now joined by over 6,000 members of the newly formed Space Force, as indicated in the?budget released this year?by the Department of Defense (DOD).
In 2019, The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs?published a report?detailing our current knowledge about veterans and?substance use disorder.
We’ll share that data in just a moment.
First, though, we have an important message for any veteran concerned about their drug or alcohol use.
In our articles, we typically focus on individuals with clinical diagnoses of alcohol use disorder (AUD) and substance use disorder (SUD). In light of the ongoing overdose and opioid crisis in the U.S., we also write a large number of articles on the topic of opioid use disorder (OUD) and the best available treatment for OUD, medication assisted treatment (MAT).
We focus on clinical diagnoses because most discussions of clinical AUD or SUD involve verified data and statistics. However, we want to take a moment now to speak to any of our veterans with alcohol or drug use issues or problems that don’t meet the clinical threshold for?addiction?or?disordered use.
This is our important message:
It’s okay to seek support before you hit bottom, before you have a crisis, and before alcohol and/or drug use causes significant physical, psychological, or emotional problems.
To be honest, it’s more than okay.
It’s a very good idea.
Don’t let this phrase scare you off: it’s the definition of?self-care. If you don’t like that phrase, think of seeking support for yourself the way you’d help out a fellow vet. It’s what you do: you take care of one another – except in this case, you take care of yourself, so that you may better care for your family, friends, loved ones, and fellow vets.
In that way, you can think of self-care – and seeking support – as a valuable, critical component of your service.
Therefore, if you think your drinking or drug use puts you at risk of developing AUD or SUD, or may negatively impact your family, your work, or your health, please contact the?U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs?(VA) and seek treatment and support.
What the VA Offers: Treatment Programs for Veterans
We’ll get to the data in a moment, we promise.
Right now, we need to extend this discussion of veterans seeking help – because help is available through the VA,?all VA services are available to all veterans,?and – as the data will show – millions of veterans need help and support.
The VA provides the following services related to alcohol and substance use:
In addition to those services, which, we’ll repeat,?are available to all veterans right now, this crisis support options is available:
Finally, a non-crisis mobile app designed for veterans trying to quit alcohol, tobacco, or substances is available here:
We encourage any veterans reading this – or their friends and families – to remind the veteran in their life that?support is available now?through the VA.
Now let’s get to that data.
How Many Veterans Have SUD, AUD, or a Mental Health Disorder?
In 2020, the National Institute of Health (NIH) included a special supplement to their annual?National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) called the?2020 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: Veteran Adults (2020 NSDUH – Veterans). A typical annual NSDUH includes data from over 70,000 U.S. citizens and includes detailed information of alcohol use, drug use, alcohol and drug treatment, and other behaviors that impact the general health and wellbeing of the populace. This special iteration offers something new: detailed analysis on the prevalence and treatment of SUD, AUD, and mental health disorders among U.S. veterans. Note: when an individual receives a diagnosis for AUD/SUD and a mental health disorder, they have?co-occurring disorders?and receive a?dual diagnosis.
Here’s the data:
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Prevalence of Alcohol, Substance Use, and Mental Health Disorders Among U.S. Military Veterans
There are two key takeaways from this data:
Those percentages – 91.7 and 51.1 – represent what we call the treatment gap: the difference between the number of people who need treatment for a specific disorder and the number of people who receive treatment for that disorder.
As you can see, the treatment gap for veterans with SUD is shocking, while the treatment gap for veterans with a mental health disorder is cause for alarm. In other words, both are far too large, and we owe it to our veterans to help close the gap in any way possible.
With all of that said – and all that information provided – we’ll shift gears and discuss a study we found called “Veterans in Recovery.”
Veterans In Recovery: Trajectories of Recovery for Veterans with Alcohol Use Disorder
In 2020, the science journal?Frontiers in Psychiatry?published a long-range study called “The National Health and Resilience in Veterans Study: A Narrative Review and Future Directions.” That study is exactly what it sounds like: an examination of the overall state of health and wellbeing among veterans of the U.S. armed forces. As a subtopic for that study, a team of researchers extracted and examined data on veterans in recovery from AUD, then published their findings in the paper we introduce immediately above, “Veterans in Recovery.”
For that subtopic, researchers administered surveys to 1,200 veterans who reported a diagnosis for clinical AUD at least once in their lives. They divided participants into three categories:
Let’s take a look at what they found.
Veterans Diagnosed With AUD: Abstinence, Subthreshold Drinking, and Hazardous Drinking
This data tells us something that’s not obvious at first glance: total abstinence is no longer the only criteria used to determine whether an individual is in recovery or actively engages in the disordered use of alcohol or substances. This aligns with the recent harm reduction movement in treating OUD. The goal of treatment and recovery is to mitigate the harm caused by disordered substance use. Treatment professionals, the medical community, and people in recovery do not completely agree on this topic yet, but the idea that decreased alcohol or substance use that quantitatively reduces harm is a valid recovery path is gaining traction – and may be a large part of the future of recovery.
That debate – does recovery require abstinence or not? – will continue, and we’ll update you on any new developments here on our blog. In the meantime, we can look at the data above and learn that although veterans use alcohol at relatively high rates, they also recover – and stay in recovery – at relatively high rates compared to the civilian population, where experts estimate relapse rates of around 67 percent.
We’ll end this article on a completely different note, with a message from veterans about Veterans Day.
What Veterans Want You to Know About Veterans Day
The Department of Defense?published a helpful explainer article in 2018 called “Five Facts to Know About Veterans Day.” These are common misconceptions that veterans would like cleared up for the benefit of the non-veteran population, and facts they’d like us all to know:
1. The Official Name
2. It’s Different Than the Other Military Holiday
3. The Date
4. More on the Name
5. Veterans Day in Other Countries
That’s where we’ll end this article: with a reminder that Friday, November 11th?is a day to honor all the people who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces. If you know a veteran who needs help with problem alcohol or drug use, please share the treatment resources from the VA above. If you know a veteran having a mental health crisis or addiction crisis, please tell them to dial the new national mental health emergency number 988 – and select “1” to access a specialist in veteran’s issues.