LAUSR

Overview Addiction to nicotine, alcohol, opioids, and other drugs is one of the leading public health and safety challenges of our time.1 In the United States, more than 25 million people smoke cigarettes, and more than 20 million people meet diagnostic criteria for other substance use disorders, which result in increased mortality and morbidity for themselves and others (eg, through alcohol-fueled violence, sharing of infected injection equipment, and other means).1 Yet all is not bleakness and despair. More than 25 million Americans have been in recovery from addiction for years; indeed, some remain in recovery for decades.1 Compared with other psychiatric disorders, long-term, stable recovery from even severe substance use disorders is common, and the degree of change individuals experience from the worst point of their illness to the fullness of their recovery can be enormous. To date, the concept of recovery has come to public attention mainly through the work of grassroots mutual aid groups and antistigma advocates. A small but growing number of social science investigations are examining the prevalence, lived experience, and consequences of long-term recovery from addiction.2 Neuroscience has also made important contributions, including documenting how abstinence induces short-term neurological changes in addicted humans and animals.3 Augmenting the number of such neuroscience studies and extending them in time to capture the impact of years of recovery on humans could have substantial clinical, scholarly, and public policy benefits.