There's an interesting story over at the Atlantic about a young woman whose brain never felt quite right until she tried cocaine. Doctors tried to help her out with therapy, Celexa, Lexapro, Wellbutrin, and other drugs, but cocaine was the thing that helped (she's now taking Adderall):

When I am 19, I have my first taste of cocaine, and soon things look not so bad. Because cocaine is so self-gratifying — it's all you want and need and feel is important in the world — and gratification is just about all I'd been looking for, I believe I have discovered my antidote. Daily, hourly, for many months, I carefully maintain this not high but level-feeling state of being. Each line sharpening my sight, I am made more consciously and comfortably present. And I have no intention of stopping this new, novel form of self-treatment. It seems almost too easy. And too easy not to let go.

The essay reminds me of a conversation I once had with Sanho Tree—a military and diplomatic historian, lately working as a drug-policy expert—while working on a series about cocaine, levamisole, and the drug war.

At one point, he suggested that some chronic users of coca, opiates, and other illegal drugs had actually stumbled on the right medication for their neuro-chemical makeup. Of course, that's a hard research sell after a century of drug prohibition and stigma. Plus, pharmaceutical companies have a stronger financial incentive to study and market expensive lab drugs than to find out whether people's depressions and other imbalances could be more effectively treated with basic extracts from plants that grow like weeds.

But his basic thought was that we might be on a cultural trajectory from a) viewing addiction as a moral failing to b) viewing addiction as a disease/condition to c) seeing at least some addictions as a form of treatment for people's conditions.