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About one in every six adults age 60 or older abuses alcohol and legal drugs, whether prescribed or over the counter. This surprising and tragic statistic from the federal government is even worse than it sounds because many seniors drink or take pills alone, their substance abuse problems unnoticed until their health is so bad they wind up in a hospital. By then it could be too late for drug or alcohol rehab.

A couple of years ago the government released some other shocking statistics about the sheer numbers of senior citizens enrolling for drug rehab treatment for opiate addiction. Opiates include prescription pain medications and street drugs as heroin, opium and morphine. In the eight-year period from 1995 to 2002, the percentage of older adults with opiates as their primary substance of abuse nearly doubled, from 6.8 percent to 12 percent. Opiates were found to be the second most frequent reason for treatment admissions among older adults, second to alcohol.

It's seems pretty certain to me that grandma and grandpa aren't out copping heroin in alleyways at midnight. They're getting hooked on painkillers prescribed by their doctors, and nobody was paying any attention. Now they need a caring drug rehab environment as well as a lot more attention to how their chronic pain is being treated.

There's a lot more alcoholism than drug addiction among our seniors. Older adults follow all the usual kinds of drinking patterns we see in younger problem drinkers. And every kind should be met with some kind of alcohol rehab program that would help them extend and improve their lives. If you know any older solitary drinkers with few friends, an inattentive family, or no family at all, you'd be doing a wonderful favor by helping that person get a handle on their drinking problem.

There is one common drinking problem that is encountered particularly among seniors, and you may have seen it. They can become tipsy or even drunk from amounts of alcohol so small that you wouldn't believe it could happen. It is generally caused by the inability to metabolize alcohol as we get older. It means that one drink hits as hard as several drinks hit a younger person. Family members tend to overlook it, thinking that grandma only had one drink, so why worry. In fact, if the older person is experiencing negative consequences and still drinking that devastating one or two drinks on a regular basis, you should investigate and, if necessary, help ease the senior into an alcohol rehab program.

Alcoholism isn't about the amount of alcohol one consumes, it's about how alcohol consumes the drinker.

These problems aren't going to go away, experts say, it's just going to get worse. Baby boomers, the sex, drugs and rock 'n' rollers from the 50s and 60s, have already started to show up for drug rehab in ever greater numbers for their addictions to illegal drugs. The U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration says the number of people 50 or older seeking drug rehab for addictions to illicit drugs will increase more than 500 percent between 1995 and 2020.

Most recovery programs are not set up to care for most older adults. Our seniors have special needs, and to salvage some of that our brilliant generation who have fallen into addiction, we need to create a drug and alcohol rehab program specifically for them.