A growing number of people are seeking help for addictions to online gambling and designer drugs, according to the latest figures from the National Alcohol and Drug Information System (LADIS), which monitors trends in addiction care.

The number of patients treated for the use of designer drugs such as 3-MMC rose from 709 in 2024 to 946 last year, an increase of 33 percent. The number of people with a ketamine addiction also increased by more than a hundred.

Over 3,100 people received treatment for a gambling problem last year, a 13 percent increase primarily caused by online gambling. About half of them are new to addiction care.

The LADIS data also shows that 68,000 people were treated for addiction in 2025, meaning that addiction care as a whole remained roughly stable. Most people struggled with an alcohol or cannabis addiction, often combined with another addiction. Alcoholism was most common among the elderly, while young people were more often addicted to cannabis.

Gerard Niemeijer of the umbrella organizations Verslavingskunde Nederland and the Dutch Mental Health Care Association stressed that more people are struggling with addiction than these figures show. “That is because it takes an average of seven years before people seek help. With alcohol addiction, for example, we see that the average age at which someone seeks help is 46. While we also know that the development of such an addiction has a long lead-up time.”

According to Niemeijer, the problems in addiction care are becoming more severe. He advocates for more prevention measures by the government and a total ban on gambling advertisements.