I thought for a second that the virtual Lou Reed was hooked on heroin.....lol
That might sound facetious, but I'm serious. It might not be explicitly stated, but IMO it'd have to be at least tacitly present.
If you took out the drug/alcohol abuse, the result would be a simulation of a different person, not Lou Reed as we know him (same with, say, Keith Richards, or any number of others one could name).
Separating/abstracting person from their experiences is as you say, a representation of a different, non-existent person - a mutant. Or worse still, some kind of dissection.
Disliking peanuts and being allergic to them each motivate abstaining from eating peanuts, an imitation of that person that abstained from eating peanuts without insight into why would be a rather pale imitation indeed.
“…chatbot of Lou Reed: 100%, sadly addicted”
I read this as directing our attention to the punchline of a bad joke or deeply strange project manifesting a deceased person in a chatbot which generated text somehow emblematic of addiction.