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A statistic that always startles me is that about 25 percent of all chronic alcohol and drug users kill themselves. Alcohol is involved in about a third of the suicides in the United States, and more than half of all suicides are committed by people with substance abuse problems. (It goes to 70 percent for adolescents.) The causal relationship between “drinking and drugging” (as we say in AA) and killing yourself is complicated—it could be that people prone to substance abuse are also prone to suicidal thinking, or vice versa, and suicidal thinking is certainly facilitated by substance dependence. It’s clear that drinking alcohol, especially excessively, makes you more likely to commit suicide, especially while you are drinking. (The risk associated with drugs other than alcohol varies according to the drug.)
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