I have a feeling a lot of opiate "overdoses" are similarly suicides. There's a point where you can't imagine quitting and you think you might as well just take more one day when you have it.

You might not be specifically trying to die a specific night but you probably accept that one of those days you will die and you're not fighting it.

It’s morally difficult, of course. There’s a reason we count these among deaths of despair, because borrowing happiness from tomorrow sounds like a fair deal to anyone who expects tomorrow to be even worse than today, or to not exist at all “for tomorrow we die.”

I think pity is the appropriate response, even in the context of remediation/intervention, because despair is the darkest place one can find oneself. While life choices may hasten that descent, including things like alcoholism, despair itself is never a choice.

I feel it’s kinda like suicide in a way

But the difference is that you are still alive. I don’t do any kind of drugs, although there are plenty other ways to ruin my own life. Surviving the moment is sometimes more important.

It can get better indeed and for that I actually consider it a somewhat good strategy especially if suicide was also considered. If you are dead it certainly won’t get better.