There is an interesting Ted talk here on rethinking addiction: https://youtu.be/PY9DcIMGxMs. I’m no expert on severe extremes of addiction but what I can say is that this Ted talk at least held a lot of truth for me. Changing personal circumstances and moving away and most importantly, improving mental health and regaining happiness can indeed be a light switch fix. Again, everyone is different, this won’t be the case for everyone, it isn’t always just environment for some it can be the way the brain ticks… and I don’t know his circumstances. It should be worth noting that it’s not necessarily something that you’d do in an hour and be done with it for the evening, so unless that’s when you think he is picking up, it’s unlikely he’s leaving for an hour to do coke and then be back for 5 hours. Unless he was doing crack which is a different kettle of fish and i have no idea how it works and don’t intend on finding out. I guess I just want to say that is possible to move and easily lost the habitual addiction. I’m not sure what you mean by stereotypical withdrawal, but it isn’t like a heroin withdrawal where you have severe physical side affects, it usually consists of anxiety, night sweats and vivid dreams. Again this isn’t coming from a place of years of abuse so anyone can correct me on this if they have had experiences to the contrary. I’m just checking in my 2 pence. Hope this somewhat helps.