I've seen a lot of headlines about studies of psychedelic drugs and compounds having a positive impact on addicts.

There are a ton of articles out there, most seem like clickbait, but there are studies that have been done such as this one [1] which say that LSD has had a positive impact on alcohol abuse. I'm not saying this is the cure, but I do think further studies could prove beneficial.

Edit: Added pdf of paper [2].

[1] http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0269881112439253

[2] https://www.ntnu.edu/documents/139226/8932977/JOP439253.pdf

It's happening, it's just happening slowly.

Point of fact, addiction is a disease and must be treated like a disease. This is pretty mainstream and not really all that controversial. The issue we're working through, glacially, is that in the US healthcare is for-profit and junkies are not profitable. So we just.... throw those people in the garbage. I think that's both immoral and economically wasteful. I know former junkies. Personally. And they're not garbage-- they have value and if you can get them well, they want to live a productive life.

The plain fact of the matter is that there's no business case for treating these folks-- the government is going to do it or nobody is going to do it. And the status quo is "Fuck it, send them to church. I'm not paying for a bunch of crackheads to get clean. They need to find jesus." Which is another way of saying "Let them eat thoughts and prayers."

While I appreciate the "US healthcare sux!!" sentiment, that's a pretty naive viewpoint that underestimates the difficulty of the situation imo. Are there other non "for profit" healthcare countries that have substantially better results in this area?

Not the poster you're replying to, but I'd say mindfulness and meditation. Learning to look inward can be an incredibly powerful tool for dealing with issues like substance abuse.

I think those things have a lot of value but quite a challenge for the kind of person who struggles with addiction to make the leap to having the kind of mindset that would benefit from them.

The OP suggested CRAFT and methadone are proven approaches. You could read the whole article it's informative and not that long.

Will do, thanks.