Karl Marx's Religious Opium

On pg. 161 in the text, Pojman references one of Marx's classical passages. The one part we discussed about in class was "Religious suffering...It is the opium of the people." The overall point that Marx was trying to make (or the point that I thought he was trying to make from the way everyone was analyzing this passage) was that he viewed religion as good and bad, which is a very different perspective for most philosophers* to view it.

He parallels religion (or religious suffering, I'm actually not sure) to the drug opium. The simplest analysis of this parallel is how [in Marx's view] in religion, one can suffer and one can be enlightened. The same is true for drugs: while using drugs, one can experience great feelings of ecstasy (which are similar to sensations felt in the religious world), and then they can also experience feelings of addiction and withdrawls (when the drug is taken away).

I wasn't sure I agreed with Marx's view that the only way someone can find salvation through [for example] a drug addiction is by filling that addiction with something else. Why can't they just take away the drug addiction and not have to replace it with something? However, his view did apply with religion. Most people who have religion removed from their lives usually replace it with something. Which goes back to Marx's saying 'religion is the opium of the people."

*This was one of the questions on my Q&A's but, was Marx's considered a philosopher? Or did he consider himself a philosopher? There is a quote on page 153, "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it." It seems as though Marx considered himself above the philosophers because they did not 'change the world', but did he?