Something else I'd point out is that science often goes through the trouble of finding paliative solutions rather than developing a fundamental understanding of the root causes.
If you don't tackle the root causes of addiction, they'll respawn identically or in the form of other addictions, in my opinion.
Re. your quote about the ego, I didn't quite get its meaning. Can you elaborate on it?
It's much harder to fund "we have to completely rework our public health infrastructure" (in the US, at least), then "We can help save these lives in <insert relatively short timeframe>".
Elisabeth Rosenthal wrote An American Sickness about this phenomenon. This essay is a good preview: How Economic Incentives have Created our Dysfunctional US Medical Market - https://medium.com/@RosenthalHealth/how-economic-incentives-...
It might be true if there was only one pharma company, but surely most companies would prefer that you buy their one-time cure than become a lifetime customer of their competitors. Diabetes is a particularly bad example because an ungodly amount of time and money has been spent trying to protect, repair, or regrow beta cells. Despite this, we have made very little progress. However, Accu-Chek is not bribing researchers to tank their experiments in the hopes of selling more test strips. The problem is that biology is absurdly complex and messy.
Plus, we have a nice counter-example. Until recently, patients with Hepatitis C were treated with a long course of interferon (6 months to a year), with relatively mixed results and fairly nasty side effects. About 50% of patients did not clear the virus, and needed liver transplants.
In 2013-4, Gilead got approval for sofosbuvir, which needs to be taken for only 12 weeks, has a much higher cure rate, and more mild side effects. To be fair, it is eye-wateringly expensive, especially in the US, but that's one way to make 'cures' work.
Before the middle of the 20th century, linseed oil and soybean oil were drying oils that were used to make stain and paint. When the paint producers figured out how to make paint from petroleum, the seed oil industry rebranded their product as "vegetable oil".
Why this isn't the focus, and instead people receive insulin, escapes my grasp.
I think the "false ego" is when a person creates a sort of 'personality' that isn't based on reality. These are the people who are always bluffing/lying about their situation. In their world they make lots of money, they can kick your ass, etc.
When a person starts to "feel safe" (financially/emotionally/etc), their need to create an alternate-presentation ("false ego") goes away.
Another friend was picked on as a child. She was always fighting with everyone... Someone said that "fighting" was how she managed to survive her childhood. When she'd grown up fighting didn't help her anymore. She's since trained in martial arts, has enough of a rainy-day fund to get her through a pinch, and is making good progress on not having to fight with everyone all the time. (edit: "feeling safe" allows her to not have to fight with people.)