What percent of recovering herion addicts actually recover?

About 50:50: In a 33-year follow-up of narcotics addicts just over half, 55.8 percent, tested negative for heroin use. About twenty percent tested positive, and 10.5 percent refused to provide a urine sample. Fourteen percent were incarcerated and not tested. Among those that had died, the most common cause of death, at 27 percent, was accidental poisoning or drug overdose, 45 percent of which was heroin.