Few things in the world fascinate me more than addiction. It isn't just what it seems on the surface, what everyone tells you in their warnings and their friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend testimonials shared in their very best after-school-special voice-something dangerous, something secret, something painful, something complicated, solitary and mired in the great unknown nebula of the psyche. Beneath all of that lies a truth more confounding and bizarre than all the simple facts, all the publicly known buzzwords. The truth is that, simply put, addiction is a love story of sorts.

Now, I'm not glamorizing it. I'm not trying to glorify it. The media, after all, has already been there and done that, with everything ranging from "heroin chic," to movies, models and perfumes with Fellini-esque, darkly-tinged ad campaigns advertising names like "Addiction" and "Obsession." I'm not trying to convince you to go out and do drugs; I'm not trying to usurp your upbringing or your morals or your mother, I promise. It's just that, in order to speak honestly about addiction, we must acknowledge the romance inherent to it-understand or even, dare I say, sympathize with what it is to find yourself chasing a horrible, beautiful, tremendous intoxication that burns into your being, as much feeling as it destroys.

Infamous the world over for her unflinching Gen-X perspective on her own life and those around her, notorious motor-mouth Elizabeth Wurtzel is no stranger to the puzzling duality of drug addiction. Released in paperback last month, "More, Now, Again," Wurtzel's fourth and latest book, is an intensely personal look at her struggles with cocaine and Ritalin. As well-written as it is edgy, the book is chock-full of the things that have made Elizabeth Wurtzel so famous: honesty, brilliance, stomach-wrenching moments of desperation and depression, hilarity and her unabashed assertions that yes, she's still fucked up, and no, she's not tired of talking about it.

One of the things that stands out for me about Wurtzel's work in general is her empowering ability to articulate what is traditionally taboo. Be it depression, deeply personal struggles between family members, therapy, embarrassing faux-pas of love and war, strung-out shoplifting escapades, sex/drugs/rock'n'roll or what have you, Wurtzel is always willing to tell you as much or more than you'd ever want to know. In her stunning post-undergrad (Harvard, no less) debut, 1997's "Prozac Nation," she took us on a whirlwind tour of her lifelong battle with depression, a condition as common as it is debilitating. As obviously intelligent as Wurtzel is, as alienating as her subject matter might be for both those who have experienced the same difficulties and those who are clueless either by choice or chance, her vernacular is somehow friendly, easy to understand and endearing even at its most horrific. Her frenetic confessions are as peppered with song lyrics, pop-culture references and the typical humdrum details of life as they are saturated with beautifully verbose observations about the human condition as well as her own. As complicated as these issues are, as "unspeakable" as they are generally perceived to be, Wurtzel has never ceased to amaze me, and, it's safe to say, the general public, with her patented way with words. The woman may be troubled, but the writer is impossibly brilliant.

A 329-page whirlwind of a confession, "More, Now, Again" is stunning. Shocking. Heartbreaking, even. The candor with which Wurtzel attacks her most desperate times, the very dregs of her own existence, is no less than utterly commendable. This honesty is present as she details her own personal winter of discontent; she first finds herself holed up in her mother's house in Florida with only her pills and the first drafts of her sophomore effort, "Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women," to keep her company, then back at home in New York, then in rehab in Connecticut and back in New York again.

And the thing is fucking hilarious too-the wry, honest language and humor laced around these incidents is inexorably human and loveable, even at points in her story when Wurtzel hates herself and those around her the most. In a time where the outside world is at war with itself, with its monies and ideologies, races, alliances and enemies, Wurtzel presents one individual at war-with substances, with self-hatred, with the relentless pressures of times past and futures uncertain, with unreturned phone-calls, with doubt, and ultimately, with love; love for herself, love for cocaine, love for Ritalin, love for pain-desire for desire's sake, no matter what the cost. Luckily for Wurtzel, she manages to make it through all of this once more, clinging and clawing and taking notes all the way, a fighter to the finish, even when prone to attacks of despondence and complete inability to function in a world which I am increasingly convinced was, unfortunately, not meant for her. Luckily for us, she remembered to write it all down.