Sep 18, 2014 10:55 PM EDT By J Baulkman, UniversityHerald Reporter

Former drug addicts have a lower risk of becoming addicted to something else in the future, according to a recent study.

Researchers found that people who get over substance addiction have a lower risk of developing a new addiction "than people who never overcame the first substance use disorder," Reuters reported. Overcoming an addiction reduces criminal activity, improves health and social functioning. A former addict's overall quality of life will also improve.

 "The results are surprising, they cut against conventional clinical lore which holds that people who stop one addiction are at increased risk of picking up a new one," Dr. Mark Olfson, senior author of the study and a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, said in a statement. "The results challenge the old stereotype that people switch or substitute addictions but never truly overcome them."

For the study, researchers collected and analyzed data from surveys in 2001 and 2004. They compared the occurrence of a new substance addiction among nearly 35,000 adults who started out with at least one substance addiction.

Survey participants were asked about their use of sedatives, tranquilizers, painkillers, stimulants, cannabis, cocaine or crack, hallucinogens, inhalants, heroin, alcohol and nicotine dependence. They were interviewed at the beginning of the study and again three years later, "with their responses either qualifying or not qualifying them for a diagnosis of substance use disorder," Reuters reported.

Researchers found that about 20 percent of the participants developed a new substance addiction by year three. That includes 27 percent of those had not gotten over their original addicion and 13 percent were former addicts.

Based on these findings, researchers concluded that "people who overcame a substance use disorder had less than half the risk of people who didn't overcome it of developing a new addiction," Reuters reported.

 "While it would be foolish to assume that people who quit one drug have no risk of becoming addicted to another drug, the new results should give encouragement to people who succeed in overcoming an addiction," Olfson said.

The study challenges the assumption that former addicts are vulnerable to becoming addicted again.

The findings were recently published in JAMA Psychiatry. 

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