Alcoholics Anonymous and many other programs treat addiction as if it was a spiritual problem. Their solution is social, "keep going to meetings". This book<p><a href="https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/2129/persuasion-and-healing" rel="nofollow">https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/2129/persuasion-and-he...</a><p>points out that faith healing was the first line treatment for most conditions so I'm going to reject that the "disease" and "spiritual" explanations are exclusive. (Pushing my fox out entirely and putting on my arch-reductionist hat I'd say <i>anything</i> you experience from drug addiction to listening to classical vs rap music makes some kind of change in your brain and the ability of us to quantify and detect that is a measure of our progress.)