The story of an unlucky young woman, Elise Rachel Brumby, whose life was consumed by drugs. Then she became another victim of the war on drugs. Her terrible life is a case study of dysfunction and of the inevitable consequences that flow from impoverished warlike thinking. War on drugs thinking leads society to harass and punish poor damaged people like her instead of caring for them. The book's thesis is that the care of these addicted people needs to be urgently and carefully rethought because the chief causes of dysfunctional levels of addiction may well be psychological rather than pharmacological. The argument is that the war on drugs thinking expects too much of some people and it assumes everyone is free to just say no. The book challenges the notion that people are either competent or not and it suggests hardcore druggies have diminished selves and that they are less free. It also suggests we are far too primitive in our moralizing when it comes to the difficult issues presented by hardcore drug use.