How to Help Someone With Drug Addiction in Los Angeles
Signs of Drug Addiction
If you’re looking for information on how to help someone with drug addiction in Los Angeles you’re in the right place. Keep reading to learn about ways to support someone in their recovery journey and how treatment for drug addiction works.
Drug addiction, also known as substance use disorder, can affect anyone at any time in their life. Developing a substance use disorder isn’t a character flaw or a moral failing but rather a disease that results from a complex combination of social, biological, and psychological determinants. People who develop an addiction often display similar signs regardless of the substance they’re using, such as:
- Changes in appearance such as weight gain or weight loss, bloodshot eyes, chronic bad breath
- Decreased personal hygiene
- Changes in daily routines
- Shakes, tremors, or slurred speech
- Unexplained changes in personality or attitude
- Sudden mood swings, irritability, angry outbursts
- Being fearful, anxious, or paranoid for no discernable reason
- Engaging in secretive or suspicious behaviors
- Sudden changes in friend groups, hangouts, or hobbies
- Risk-taking such as driving under the influence or having unprotected sex
- Neglecting work, family, or school obligations, or drop in performance
- Legal troubles such as arrests
- Money problems
Drug addiction is more prevalent than you might think, in 2020 over 14% of Americans aged 12 or older had a substance use disorder within the past year, with the highest rates for illicit drug use among groups aged 18-25 years of age. It’s also become more dangerous with the widespread use of Fentanyl within the illicit drug black market, over 72,000 people died from a drug overdose in 2017. That’s three times the number of people who died by overdose in 2002. Each one of those deaths was a preventable tragedy that left grieving families to mourn their loss.
