If there’s one thing we know in healthcare it’s this: The sooner we can act against illness or injury, the better the outcomes are likely to be. That’s why we vaccinate our children, visit the dentist, and get mammograms, prostate exams, colonoscopies, and flu shots. And that’s why it’s worth understanding what the path to drug or alcohol addiction looks like. Ideally, we want to be able to act on addiction before it causes irrevocable damage.