It's the same compounds, though. And we're only comparing them on one dimension - simple physical addiction. How misleading can it be?

As I said, the studies are old. With the rise of superpotent synthetic opioids in the illegal market, and probably more caution in hospital use - one of the reasons these studies were made, was probably that someone noticed "wow, they sure used a lot of opioids during the Vietnam War, I wonder if that led to a rise in street addicts?" It's possible that it's no longer true that patients get much higher doses than the typical street addict. But it used to be the case, at least, and we can still learn from what we observed back then.

I think there's still plenty of support for the conclusions, that addicts can beat physical addiction, but that they start again, and that the fear of withdrawal pains is not a big factor in what's keeping them as addicts.

Pretty misleading, to be honest. As the parent comment to yours said, the ROA + dose schedule + AUC + peak plasma concentration differ so vastly that "its the same compounds" almost doesn't matter.

The differences between street/illicit use and hospital use are so extreme even just from a physical point of view that it is unreasonable to compare the physical addiction/withdrawal they both cause.

That being said, physical addiction/withdrawal is definitely only one piece of the puzzle of why addiction happens and addicts don't stop their use. I think that using the data of hospitalized patients being able to push through it isn't as strong as an argument for that as you've made it out to be, but that doesn't mean it isn't true.

Addiction is a very hard problem, and I'm hopeful that we'll continue developing new treatments and support methods as a society, even if its semi by accident like with GLP-1s.