Drug and alcohol information system (DAISy)
Overview of Initial Assessments for Specialist Drug and Alcohol Treatment 2024/25

About this release

This annual release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) reports on people presenting for initial assessment at specialist drug and alcohol treatment services in Scotland provided by Alcohol and Drug Partnerships in 2024/25. For the first time this release also includes information on treatment outcomes. As of this release, the term "co-dependency", describing services for people seeking support for problematic use of drugs and alcohol, has been replaced with "Alcohol and drugs". These data were extracted from the Drug and Alcohol Information System (DAISy).

Main points

In 2024/25:

Across Scotland, assessment completeness was 67% in 2024/25. Initial assessments for 17,578 people accessing specialist alcohol and/or drug treatment were recorded on DAISy.

Demographics

• People starting alcohol only treatment had a higher median age (47 years) than people starting drug only treatment (37) or both alcohol and drug treatment (34).
• Two thirds (67%) of people starting treatment for problematic substance use were male (33% were female). The percentage of males was highest for people starting treatment for both alcohol and drugs (75%), followed by drugs only (70%) and alcohol only (63%).
• People living in the 20% most deprived communities (as measured using Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation) accounted for 37% of assessments in 2024/25, compared to only 7% of assessments for people living in the 20% least deprived communities.

Alcohol

• The median age for when people deemed that their alcohol use became problematic was 30 years for males and 34 years for females.
• 88% of people starting alcohol treatment reported drinking in the month prior to their assessment. Spirits (35%) was the most commonly reported main drink type.
• 61% of people starting alcohol treatment who had consumed alcohol in the month prior to assessment reported drinking on a daily basis.

Drugs

• Cocaine (32%) was the most commonly reported main drug used by people starting specialist drug treatment in Scotland, followed by heroin (25%).
• Of the people who reported using opioids in the previous month, 65% had a take-home naloxone kit (a medication to prevent fatal opioid overdoses) at the time of initial assessment.
• Overall, 27% of people reported a history of injecting drugs with 10% injecting in the month prior to assessment and a further 17% injecting more than one month ago.

Alcohol and drugs

• Spirits was the most common main alcohol type (32%) and cocaine the most common main drug (52%) reported by people starting treatment for problematic use of both alcohol and drugs.
• Daily alcohol consumption was lower for the people starting treatment for problematic use of both alcohol and drugs (31%) than the alcohol cohort (61%).
• 35% of people in the Alcohol and Drugs cohort who reported cocaine as their main drug used it at least once a day. This was lower than for the drug cohort (49%). Polysubstance use carries various and extensive risks, and there are specific risks in the consumption of both alcohol and cocaine.

Treatment outcomes

• Between 2021/22 and 2024/25 38% of people experienced a positive discharge from tier 3 and 4 alcohol services, 18% of people were retained in treatment and 6% were transferred to tier one and two services. 38% of people were recorded as having a negative discharge.
• Females experienced a higher percentage of positive discharges than males (33% compared to 30% for males across all substance types).

Background

DAISy is a unique source of data on people accessing tier 3 and 4 treatment services for problematic substance use. It provides insights into their drug and alcohol use, health and social circumstances at the point when they contacted services for treatment. National DAISy data recording began in April 2021. Information on data completeness and quality is available in the main report.

This release should be viewed in conjunction with the associated Excel workbook which provides users with accessible interactive content based on data from 2024/25.

Further information

The next release of this publication will be Winter 2026/27.