In my NA area, which is pretty small as areas goes (I know most everyone in every meeting), we lose one or two members a year who die in relapse. Of course, that's only those who were in recovery to begin with. Addict's don't just 'die' or 'wear out' though. We die of something. Here are some ways addicts die: overdose, suicide, homicide (shootings etc), bad/tainted drug, accident such as from driving under the influence, or accident like falling down a set of stairs, heart attack (crack, crystal meth), disease left untreated such as AIDS, Hep-C, or something like pneumonia. Let's see, the last 6) deaths I know of were from 1)hit by a car while under influence of alcohol and pills, 2)heroin overdose, 3)sepsis from untreated infection, 4)heroin overdose 5)heroin overdose, 6)OD from combo of methadone and alcohol - the youngest was a 16 year old girl who died while in a treatment facility for teens (this incident closed the place). the oldest was early 50's. The rest, in their 30's or early 40's.
I also actually had gathered statistics from a thread at new year's from parents of addicts (me being one) and during last year, we lost 2 of our addict kids to death here in this forum. many more than that did get clean last year, but the vast majority of the young addicts in our lives continue to use to live and live to use. According to NA, addicts will either wind up dead, institutionalized (including prisons), or recovering. Those are the options and I agree, there are not many old addicts unless they are clean ones.