When I was studying and getting my AA in Addiction Studies, one of my professors explained the phenomena of why drugs seem to work and then stop working.

Alcohol and other drugs pretty mush numb you to the stress you feel. If you think of stress as life being at life set like a stereo at an extremely high volume level playing music which you find annoying, then you can thin of drugs as a chemical way to turn the volume of stress levels down. The problem is the body seeks to return to irs own natural settings, so it will try to crank the volume back up to what it considers to be "normal", so when a person's chemical of choice wears off, they find their stress levels feel like they are set at higher volume levels. This is because the body seeks homeostasis or balance, and mind altering chemicals throw off that balance, and the body tries to adjust back what it sees as "normal". This causes a person to become psychologically dependent on using their chemical(s) of choice to maintain a felling of normalcy.

Between physical addiction and psychological addiction, the psychological aspects are much harder to deal with. Once a person has become psychologically dependent on the effects of chemicals, unless they deal with the aspects of their life that causes them stress, they are likely to relapse, because the "volume" levels of stress they feel have been set higher. Once they relapse, out evolved survival mechanisms set in and say "I know this, I've been here before" and the old psychological addiction kicks in within a very short time, and can even be instantaneous, depending on the individual and chemical of choice. That is why there is no such thing as "cured", when it comes to addiction, but just a constant state of recovery.

While getting my AA in Addiction Studies, we did cover the idea that addiction is obsessive behavior, and that substituting the obsession of religion for drugs can get a person off of drugs. However, religion is a poor substitute for logic and reasoning to put a persons life back together in a functional way. To turn it all over to "god" is just not wanting to actually do the mental work of facing who you are and making changes to a point where you actually like who you are. However, for some people switching obsessions from drugs to religion is the best they can ever do.

To supply a little more context, addiction has two aspects. Physical and psychological. Physical addition is easier to resolve. The psychological side is much harder and it can take a lifetime of self work to make yourself into a person that you yourself are happy with. When I say "obsession" above, it is referring to the psychological sides of addiction. Switching obsessions from drugs to religion is changing problems, but to one that is generally less harmful over the long run, and it is an obsession that leaves a person (mostly) functional and able to be self supporting financially. Most of the time religion is less dysfunctional than addiction. Of course everyone here knows that (organized) religion is still dysfunctional.

Jesus clearly smokes too much weed!!?!! ‍