Drugs medicate pain. Life does have pain. Learning to live in consciousness in complex world takes practice. Humans aren't born with knowledge of how to navigate our own thoughts, feelings and behaviour. Self medicating pain works for while but the brain becomes dependent and no matter what the ending of any obsessive and compulsive dependency is painful for the addict and those around them. There are no shortcuts.
 People who are involved with addicts who don't use but want to control the addicts behavior will eventually go crazy themselves as they lurch from one crisis to the next with the addicts downward spiral. 
Addiction is here to stay unless there is a shift in social psychology but that isn't going to happen anytime soon. It won't be pretty going forward.