Drug War: An Addiction Expert Faces a Formidable Foe - Prescription Drugs

A highly informative article, not only about the history and passion of the U.S.'s leading scientist of addiction (who is a great-granddaughter of Leon Trotsky), but also about how addiction works and how addiction to legal, prescription drugs is outrunning addiction to illegal ones.

An Addiction Expert Faces a Formidable Foe - Prescription Drugs - NYTimes.com: "From heroin and cocaine to sex and lies, Tetris and the ponies, the spectrum of human addictions is vast. But for Dr. Nora D. Volkow, the neuroscientist in charge of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, they all boil down to pretty much the same thing.

She must say it a dozen times a day: Addiction is all about the dopamine. The pleasure, pain and devilish problem of control are simply the detritus left by waves of this little molecule surging and retreating deep in the brain."