Results from clinical and population-based studies have shown higher remission rates for dependence on cannabis [7–9] and alcohol [4, 5, 10], followed by cocaine [2, 6, 11] and nicotine [3, 12]. These studies have also identified several factors associated with remission, including being female, older, White, married, with higher educational attainment, and a later onset of substance use [5, 7, 10, 13–15]. Despite this extensive body of research, important questions remain. To date, comparisons of remission rates across all racial/ethnic groups in the US are not available, due to limited sample size for minority groups in most datasets [3, 5]. Scarce information exists regarding the commonality of remission predictors across substances. Few studies have examined the role of psychiatric comorbidity on the probability of remission, and even fewer have assessed time-varying predictors of remission [5, 14, 16, 17].
