I am an alcoholic sober for several years. It is fundamentally a willpower problem. Even if insurance or the government paid for inpatient rehab, as soon as you

I am an alcoholic sober for several years. It is fundamentally a willpower problem. Even if insurance or the government paid for inpatient rehab, as soon as you walk out the door it’s only willpower that stops you from continuing to drink. The same goes for being given medication that reduces cravings for alcohol or makes you sick if you drink. You can always just not take it. That said, most people don’t become addicts in a vacuum. Many people become addicts only because a life under the influence beats their life otherwise. Unfortunately it’s a lot harder to fix someone’s life than it is to get them sober. But the poor sober life is, in my opinion, the actual underlying condition which leads to addiction. We don’t really have a framework for treating that as a society nor through the medical system.