I will not elaborate here on the observable phenomenon that those alcoholics who rely on self drink and those who rely on God do not. The phenomenon can be explained, but the explanation is speculative, and of more relevance is its systematic observability.
What about everything else?
Self cannot be overcome with the tools of self. Rank materialism and its corollary, the enthronement of self as the centre and main objective of one's life, will not cut its own throat. Ordinary morality, in other words precepts torn from their source like cut flowers, can decorate but cannot fundamentally alter the nature of an individualist, materialist life. There are no shades or degrees here: either wealth, comfort, achievement, and reputation in this world have value in themselves or they do not. If they are valuable in themselves, they are all, because they will demand all and nothing else is needed. If they are not, they are utterly worthless in themselves, though they may have roles in enabling what is good. A real choice has to be made. If they are not valuable in themselves, what is? One cannot navigate without a compass, and one cannot live without a point. Another point must be found.
The answer lies in the realm of the spirit. The field is now wide open for beliefs and interpretations. There's the afterlife, neat, distinct from this world, in appalling contrast, and the only hope for those here. There's a broader understanding, namely that the realm of the spirit can also be discerned here, as a reflection of the fuller, more substantive world that lies beyond the material world, in the same way that the moon reflects the sun's light. Not only can it be discerned: it becomes a context within which to live whilst locked in the material realm. One goes from being an actor on the stage who has forgotten he is an actor and believes the play is real to being an actor one stage (!) removed: playing the same part in the same play but with an awareness of the director, the producer, the audience, and the endless world beyond the theatre. A third way is theoretically possible: to hold onto virtue and character-building, quite in the absence of any genuinely metaphysical considerations, but this we will leave aside. The jigsaw puzzle is pointless if a picture does not emerge. Furthermore, it is the object not the tools that render actions moral or immoral. The same architectural, static, and construction principles are deployed in the construction of a prison camp as in the construction of a cathedral. A diligently built prison camp is still a prison camp. It cannot be rendered a cathedral by good intentions, diligence, kindness, or goodness of heart. Thus the world cannot be transformed by individuals' personal goodness. The project is too big; the waves are too high; the despatches from the front too shattering.
God, and the primary realm over which He presides, therefore provides a context, a purpose, and a system by which to live, and in fact the only viable one.
There is more: self is so loud that God's guidance is drowned out; self is so imperious that God's strength is quite inaccessible: that is, unless God is sought with such humility that self is temporarily knocked out of play, allowing the first connection with God to be made, from which bridgehead the whole territory can be reconquered. Humility, here, is the recognition that self offers nothing of value yet cannot be overcome by virtue of this insight alone. This flash bursts the lock, and the wise will run for their life from self's cramped cell.
Setting aside the question of active addiction, therefore, God is required for all three elements: purpose, direction, and means.
The effect on the material life is extraordinary: it will indeed be utterly transformed, but that transformation is not for the benefit of the individual as its chief purpose; the purpose, rather, is to demonstrate to others the power of God, to act as a beacon or flare to signal direction to those who are lost. The transformation is two-fold: both spiritual and material. The individual 'broadcasts on a different frequency', which is the significant element; secondarily, the life lived may be more effective, efficient, and harmonious, and this will almost inevitably have outward effects. But the precise form of these outward effects (wealth, comfort, achievement, or reputation) is incidental, and these commodities are never guaranteed per se. The good one is enjoined to do in the world to improve the human lot and alleviate suffering, to build here in accordance with heavenly blueprints, is a means not an end, however welcome and desirable its human byproducts. The aim is not to create a heaven on earth that renders heaven effectively redundant, crowning man as the great overcomer of his own nature. Moreover, the relationship between the material realm and the realm of the spirit is like the relationship between the mathematical beauty of astronomical relations presented on a chalkboard in a physics classroom and having one's breath taken away by a starlit night. We're not to be satisfied with the representation, down here: it seems to be the ultimate reality only because we've never lived elsewhere. Cf. Plato's cave for more on this idea. Furthermore, the artefacts of the individual's worldly life, in the world's terms, may be low, humble, unenviable, or even undesirable: sickness, loss, vicissitude, and other temporal ills may beset the individual. Some theologians might assert that difficulties are sent precisely to attract the individual's attention, to wrest the reliance from the material onto the spiritual, but that question lies beyond the scope of this brief composition.
All in all, the point of reliance on God is not hope that one's material life will necessarily improve, combined with comfort as a sort of spiritual anaesthetic, the love of God as a substitute for the lovelessness of men, the light in the darkness as a pathetic and poetic end in itself; these three and other elements may feature, but the real point appears to be this: We've been given a choice, here, in the classroom, to be ourselves or to be our Selves: the Self that willingly turns back to the Source that was abandoned in a vain attempt to usurp the role of its own Authorship. This choice activates such a genuinely grand and glorious project that material objectives fade to nothing, and real excitement grows as the Great Reality heaves into view.