means a structured combination of medical, psychological, and social support designed to help someone stop compulsive substance use and stay stopped.

from for most of history addiction was treated as sin or moral failure, punished not treated; the shift began in the 1930s with alcoholics anonymous and accelerated in the 1960s-90s as neuroscience showed addiction rewires the brain's reward circuitry, reframing it as a chronic medical condition rather than a character flaw.