90 Fun Facts About Addiction Recovery

In which Ohio city did Bill W. and Dr. Bob meet in 1935, founding Alcoholics Anonymous?

Bill was on a failed business trip and, fearing relapse, asked to be put in touch with another alcoholic; Henrietta Seiberling introduced them.

What date is celebrated as the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous?

It marks Dr. Bob's last drink; Bill W.'s own sobriety date is December 11, 1934.

What was Dr. Bob Smith's medical specialty?

He stayed sober from June 1935 until his death from colon cancer in 1950 and is said to have helped some 5,000 alcoholics.

Through which Christian revivalist movement did AA's founders meet?

Its American leader Sam Shoemaker ran the Calvary Rescue Mission where Ebby Thacher got sober before visiting Bill.

Which old friend visited Bill Wilson in November 1934, refused a drink and said he'd 'got religion'?

Ebby became Bill's guide in sobriety; the visit is where the idea of one alcoholic talking to another began.

Which New York doctor treated Bill W. and framed alcoholism as an 'allergy' plus mental obsession?

His 'Doctor's Opinion' opens the Big Book; his hospital used the deliriant belladonna during detox.

Why is AA's basic text nicknamed 'the Big Book'?

Published in 1939, it has sold 30 million copies and the Library of Congress named it one of 88 'Books that Shaped America'.

Where in the Big Book are the Twelve Steps first laid out?

The 'Ninth Step Promises' come in Chapter 6, 'Into Action'.

The first of the Twelve Steps says members admit they are what over their addiction?

It refers to lack of control over the compulsion despite consequences; Overeaters Anonymous reads it as 'powerless over compulsive overeating'.

What is the term for the experienced member who guides a newcomer through the Twelve Steps?

NA describes one as 'simply another addict in recovery who is willing to share his or her journey'; sponsees usually do their Fifth Step with them.

Which step involves reviewing a written moral inventory with another person?

The inventory itself is the Fourth Step; the Ninth is making amends.

AA's Twelve Traditions were formally adopted at its first international convention in which year?

Bill W. first published them in the April 1946 Grapevine as 'Twelve Points to Assure Our Future'.

Which theologian is credited with the Serenity Prayer, adopted by AA from about 1941?

The first AA group found it in a 1941 New York Herald Tribune obituary; Niebuhr had used it in sermons since about 1932.

Which Akron nun gave early AA patients a Sacred Heart medallion to return before a first drink?

The sobriety chip tradition itself is thought to have started in Indianapolis in 1942; there is still no official AA medallion.

Sobriety coins are traditionally the size of what?

Standard medallions are 34 mm across; they are AA culture rather than conference-approved literature.

Approximately how many members did AA estimate it had in 2021?

Active in 180 countries, with 73 percent of members in the US and Canada.

A 2020 Cochrane review found Twelve-Step Facilitation for AA produced higher rates of what?

It also found better healthcare cost savings than treatments such as CBT.

Who was the first woman to achieve long-term sobriety in AA and founded the National Council on Alcoholism?

She organised the National Committee for Education on Alcoholism in 1944 to spread the message that alcoholism is a disease, not a moral failing.

Which fellowship for families and friends of alcoholics was co-founded in 1951 by Bill W.'s wife Lois?

Alateen followed for teenagers; Al-Anon is the third-largest twelve-step programme.

Narcotics Anonymous, the second-largest twelve-step fellowship, was founded in which year?

By 2024 it held 77,000 meetings a week in 145 countries; its Basic Text says NA 'has no opinion on outside issues'.

Which twelve-step fellowship first met in Los Angeles in 1957 and offers a 'twenty questions' self-test?

Publicity from columnist Paul Coates helped; GA's 'twenty questions' is a self-test for compulsive gambling.

Overeaters Anonymous was founded in 1960 after Rozanne S. attended a meeting of which fellowship?

She realised the Twelve Steps could apply to food; the first meeting was in Hollywood.

What does SMART stand for in the secular programme SMART?

It draws on cognitive behavioural therapy and motivational interviewing rather than a higher power.

What does Rational Recovery call the 'addictive voice'?

Trimpey's AVRT technique treats every pro-drinking thought as 'the bark of Beast'; the group declared meetings obsolete in 1998.

Women for Sobriety's 'New Life' programme was created in 1976 by which sociologist?

She drew on Emerson's 'Self-Reliance' and New Thought as an alternative to AA.

What is the motto of LifeRing Secular Recovery?

It grew out of Secular Organizations for Sobriety and incorporated under its own name in 1999.

The Christ-centred programme Celebrate Recovery began in 1991 at which megachurch?

John Baker wrote its curriculum; it claims 5 million participants across 35,000 churches.

Which former First Lady disclosed her alcoholism and founded a treatment centre in Rancho Mirage?

She confronted her prescription-drug and alcohol dependence in 1978 after a family intervention.

The Betty Ford Center merged in 2014 with which Minnesota treatment pioneer founded in 1949?

The combined Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is headquartered in Minnesota, home of the '28-day' treatment model.

The first Oxford House sober-living home opened in 1975 when residents of a closing halfway house did what?

Paul Molloy led them; there are now nearly 3,000 democratically run Oxford Houses.

Every Oxford House operates on three rules. Which of these is one of them?

The others are no drugs, alcohol or disruption, and paying the equal shared expenses.

The DSM-5 (2013) merged 'substance abuse' and 'substance dependence' into a single diagnosis graded how?

Severity depends on how many of 11 criteria are met; 'severe' is treated as synonymous with addiction.

Which is the only behavioural (non-substance) addiction recognised in the DSM-5-TR?

Internet gaming is listed for further study; the ICD-11 goes further and includes gaming disorder.

Roughly what share of people with a substance use disorder eventually reach remission?

Usually only after many years, which is why addiction is managed as a chronic, relapsing condition.

Which neurotransmitter's signalling gives a drug and its cues their pull on attention in addiction?

Meanwhile brain stress systems become overactive and prefrontal control weakens, leaving craving poorly restrained.

Delirium tremens typically begins how long after a heavy drinker's last drink?

Seizures peak earlier, at 24 to 36 hours; benzodiazepines are the standard treatment and DTs can be fatal untreated.

What is the Latin meaning of 'delirium'?

A ploughing metaphor for disordered thinking; the term delirium tremens dates from 1813.

Which scale is typically used to monitor alcohol withdrawal in hospital?

The Clinical Institute Withdrawal Assessment for Alcohol guides benzodiazepine dosing.

Which medication, sold as Narcan, reverses an opioid overdose by blocking opioid receptors?

Patented in 1961, it works within two minutes intravenously; the nasal spray was approved in 2015 and is now sold over the counter.

Methadone, used in maintenance treatment for opioid use disorder, was developed in the 1930s in which country?

Gustav Ehrhart and Max Bockmühl synthesised it; maintenance doses of 80 to 100 mg a day show the best results.

In which year was buprenorphine (Suboxone) FDA-approved for treating opioid use disorder?

It is a partial agonist, so it caps respiratory depression; the naloxone is there to discourage injecting.

Which drug, sold as Antabuse, makes drinking unpleasant by letting acetaldehyde build up?

Its effect was discovered by accident when rubber-factory workers exposed to the chemical developed severe alcohol intolerance.

Which industry accidentally revealed the Antabuse chemical's effect on drinkers?

It was used in vulcanising rubber around 1900; workers at a Swedish boot factory noticed it too.

Which drug, sold as Vivitrol in a monthly injection, blocks opioid effects and cuts alcohol cravings?

John David Sinclair's method pairs it with continued drinking to 'extinguish' the habit; WHO still prefers agonists like methadone for opioid disorder.

Contingency management, where patients earn vouchers for abstinence, was introduced in the 1990s for which drug?

It remains the most reliably effective method for producing cocaine abstinence in controlled trials.

Motivational interviewing, described by William Miller in 1983, helps clients resolve what?

Miller and Stephen Rollnick developed it while treating problem drinkers.

In Prochaska and DiClemente's stages of change, which stage comes right before 'action'?

People in preparation intend to change within a month; the model was born in smoking-cessation research in 1977.

The 1970s 'Rat Park' experiments found rats consumed less morphine when housed how?

Bruce Alexander built a colony 200 times the size of a lab cage to test whether isolation drove drug-taking.

Portugal decriminalised personal drug possession in 2001, referring users to what instead of court?

The threshold is a ten-day supply; the aim was cutting HIV infections, half of which came from injecting.

Insite, North America's first supervised injection site, opened in 2003 in which city?

In 2017 it recorded 2,151 overdoses on site and no deaths.

Which UK charity runs the Dry January campaign, formalised in 2013?

4,000 people signed up the first year and 215,000 worldwide in 2024; Finland ran a 'Sober January' as early as 1942.

Which vitamin did Bill W. promote in the 1960s as the 'third leg in the stool' of recovery?

He learned of it from Abram Hoffer; his supervised LSD experiments the decade before were far less popular with AA members.

Which magazine listed Bill W. among its 100 most important people of the 20th century, as 'The Healer'?

He died in 1971 after 36 years of sobriety.

In the United States, a standard drink contains roughly how much pure alcohol?

That is a 12-ounce can of 5 percent beer, a 5-ounce glass of 12 percent wine or a 1.5-ounce shot of 40 percent spirits.

Which is the most commonly consumed psychoactive substance in the world?

Unlike almost every other psychoactive drug, it is legal and unregulated nearly everywhere and even sits on the WHO's essential medicines list, as caffeine citrate for premature infants.

Which substance is the greatest cause of preventable death worldwide?

Half of smokers die from smoking-related illness, and each cigarette is estimated to shorten life by an average of about 11 minutes.

Roughly how many years earlier do active smokers die, on average, than non-smokers?

The WHO puts tobacco deaths at more than 7 million a year, and nicotine remains one of the most addictive substances known.

After inhalation, roughly how long does nicotine take to reach the brain?

Its half-life in the body is only about two hours, which is why cravings return so quickly and dependence sets in so hard.

Which Beijing pharmacist invented the modern electronic cigarette around 2003?

By 2021 there were about 82 million e-cigarette users worldwide, against 1.1 billion smokers.

Which US e-cigarette brand, born of Stanford design-school work, held about 72% of the market by 2018?

It advertised in Seventeen and on the Nick Jr. channel, and the FDA moved to ban its products in 2022 amid concern about teen vaping.

Fentanyl is roughly how many times more potent than morphine?

Paul Janssen synthesised it in 1960; US overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids rose from about 2,600 in 2011 to more than 70,000 in 2021.

Which veterinary sedative, nicknamed 'tranq', increasingly cuts street fentanyl and resists naloxone?

It was tested on humans in 1960s West Germany as a blood-pressure drug before being shelved for animal use.

Which company sold heroin over the counter from 1898 as a supposedly non-addictive cough remedy?

Felix Hoffmann, who also synthesised aspirin, made it at Bayer; the name came from the German heroisch, meaning heroic or strong.

Which brand of methamphetamine was sold without prescription from 1938 and issued to Wehrmacht troops?

Soldiers were often useless for a day or two afterwards, and the drug is now a second-line ADHD treatment sold as Desoxyn.

Cocaine is derived from the leaves of a plant native to which continent?

Karl Koller's 1884 discovery that it numbs tissue made it the first local anaesthetic, and it is still used that way in some ear, nose and throat surgery.

Which 1914 US law taxed opiates and coca products, often seen as the start of federal drug prohibition?

The 1909 Smoking Opium Exclusion Act had been the first federal ban on non-medical use of any substance.

Which US president declared drug abuse "public enemy number one" in June 1971?

Nixon had also signed the Controlled Substances Act the previous year, creating the drug schedules still in use.

How many schedules of controlled substances did the 1970 Controlled Substances Act create?

Schedule I is for drugs judged to have high abuse potential and no accepted medical use; the DEA and FDA decide what moves between schedules.

Which constitutional amendment brought in national Prohibition, in force from January 1920?

The Volstead Act set the enforcement rules, and the Twenty-first Amendment repealed the whole thing 13 years later.

In what year did Prohibition end in the United States?

Opposition had grown as the Depression bit and critics pointed to lost tax revenue and rural values being imposed on cities.

The 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act pushed states to age 21 by threatening to withhold what?

Reagan signed it on July 17, 1984; the law limits purchase and public possession, and only a handful of states ban under-21 consumption outright.

Which mother founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving in 1980 after her daughter Cari was killed?

The driver had recently been arrested for another drunk hit-and-run; Lightner left the group she founded in 1985.

Which Indiana State Police captain invented and trademarked the Breathalyzer in 1954?

It replaced Harger's 1930s Drunkometer, which had motorists blow into a balloon inside the machine.

Blood alcohol concentrations above roughly what level may be fatal?

The common US driving limit of 0.08 percent is a fifth of that; some countries set the limit at zero.

What level of alcohol exposure has been established as safe for a fetus?

Because alcohol is a known teratogen, controlled trials on pregnant women would be unethical, so no threshold has ever been set.

Under which Los Angeles police chief was the D.A.R.E. programme launched in 1983?

At its peak it ran in three-quarters of US school districts, with police officers visiting elementary classrooms and Daren the Lion as its mascot.

Whose reply to an Oakland schoolgirl in 1984 became the "Just Say No" slogan?

The phrase went unnoticed until the school reviewed footage the next year and a 12-year-old suggested a Just Say No club.

Red Ribbon Week, held every October, began as a tribute to which murdered DEA agent?

He had worked undercover in Guadalajara for more than four years before he was kidnapped in 1985.

Roughly what share of the risk of developing an addiction is estimated to be genetic?

Twin and adoption studies put the heritability of alcohol use disorder at around 50 percent, spread across many common gene variants.

Cannabis is by far the most widely used illicit drug; roughly how many people used it in 2013?

That is between 2.7 and 4.9 percent of everyone aged 15 to 65, with the highest use in Zambia, the US, Canada and Nigeria.

MDMA, known as ecstasy or molly, was first synthesised in 1912 by a chemist at which company?

It sat unused for decades before therapists tried it in the 1970s and it hit the street in the 1980s.

On which day is the American Cancer Society's Great American Smokeout held?

The first national event was in San Francisco's Union Square in 1977, growing out of a Massachusetts idea to donate a day's cigarette money to a school.

US drug overdose deaths peaked at roughly what annual figure in 2022?

The rate had climbed from 2.5 per 100,000 people in 1968 to 33.2 in 2022 before falling back to about 77,600 deaths in the year to March 2025.

Which agency estimated that take-home naloxone programmes had prevented about 10,000 US deaths?

Handing the antidote to drug users and their carers, with training, is one of the best-evidenced harm-reduction measures.

Which US drug crisis did the CDC describe as arriving in three waves, starting with painkillers?

Wave two was heroin, wave three synthetic fentanyl, and researchers now describe a fourth wave of stimulants mixed with fentanyl.

In which city was Cocaine Anonymous founded in November 1982?

An anonymous film-industry member started it after seeing how little help existed for cocaine's particular difficulties.

Alateen is a part of which fellowship, designed for younger relatives and friends of alcoholics?

Al-Anon itself was co-founded in 1951, sixteen years after AA.

SAMHSA was established by Congress in 1992 out of the abolition of which agency?

The Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration had combined NIAAA, NIDA and NIMH since 1973.

Roughly how many copies has AA's Big Book sold, placing it among the best-selling books ever?

Time magazine placed it among the 100 most influential English-language books since 1923, and the Library of Congress named it a 'Book that Shaped America'.

In which year was Alcoholics Anonymous, the 'Big Book', first published?

Its full title promised the story of how more than one hundred men and women had recovered from alcoholism.