“Americans consume five billion tranquilizers per year. One-third of all US high school students binge-drink every two weeks, and 100,000 children ages ten and eleven get drunk weekly. Four hundred fifty million cups of coffee are drunk every day, and 2.7 gallons of alcohol per person are imbibed each year. About 2.2 million people in the US use cocaine once a week. The national cost for alcohol and other drug use is approximately $238 billion annually.”

While not ignoring the psycho-social-spiritual approach to addiction, we are seeing some interesting research on the relationship between addiction and poor nutrition. Alcohol is the most studied drug and offers a model for understanding many other addictions, including cigarette, coffee, sugar, carbohydrates, gambling and sex addictions