Addiction is not a disease, it is an attitude. Addiction, in the end, is a behavior that we choose to indulge.
Addiction is something that you act on without thought of consequence. Addiction is something you want so much that nothing at the moment compares. Addiction is all about fulfilling one's desires. It has absolutely nothing to do with fulfilling one's needs. Addiction is selfishness, pure and simple.
Addiction means a loss of thinking ability and a total surrender to desire. This is why all addiction is bad. Anything that closes the mind and allows the individual to act without thinking, lessens one's humanity. Indeed, this is the way of animals, which lack discretionary thinking. Addiction therefore is the height of inhumanity.
Whenever we close off and just do what we want to do, for no other reason than we want to, this is addiction and is very bad.
Addiction must be recognized for what it is. Addiction is a choice, a choice of a weak mind to perform a weak task. This is a criminal offense against morality. This offends one's humanity at its very core.
The only rational answer to addiction is hard labor. An entire reorientation of mind must be achieved, similar to that which is achieved in military boot camp training.
We only contribute to harming the already harmed whenever we are sympathetic to those addicted. We must root out of ourselves such weakness and treat the addicted [and the addiction inside us] with a serious dose of harshness. We must learn to impose discipline and severe, painful penalties for selfish weakness [see chizuk list #121]. This is the way we actually help one another and the way we can successfully end addictions.
We must push people [and ourselves] to think and to act properly. No more, "Mr. Nice Guy," he is too busy indulging himself, taking drugs, [binging on lust], getting drunk and feeling sorry for himself, wishing the world was an absolute ideal place of hippie-dippy love.
You want to make this world better, then follow the role model of discipline set by a military drill sergeant. Live by it, expect others to as well and have little to no sympathy for those who will disagree.