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The current paradigm for understanding addiction is a brain disease of compulsion, investigated in large part through animal models. Yet addiction in humans has dimensions of meaning and suffering alike that cannot be captured by neuroscience or modelled in animals. This First-Year Seminar explores addiction by combining what we know from addiction science with what we know from philosophy and the humanities, as well as therapy, journalism, film, and autobiographical narratives. We will work to understand the puzzle of why people use drugs in ways that can come to destroy their lives through these various lenses and without recourse to stigma, dogma, or dehumanization. This interdisciplinary course will develop students' skills in reading, analytic thinking, and writing; we will also visit an animal lab.