Recent repeat episodes of The Sopranos dealt with addiction - big time.

Christopher relapsed after cleaning up. First he drank more than just a little wine with Uncle Tony, and then - in scenes as uncomfortable as anything The Sopranos has ever produced - he started shooting up in a car with a junkie.

But addiction has always been a key plot ingredient of The Sopranos and other noted HBO dramas like Six Feet Under and Deadwood. So perhaps it's appropriate that the pay-cable network is launching Addiction, a major documentary project aimed at helping Americans understand addiction as a chronic but treatable brain disease.

Project aptly describes the HBO effort, since the programming is in the form of a multiplatform campaign. It premieres at 7 p.m. Thursday with a feature-length documentary titled simply Addiction.

Bringing together some of the nation's leading experts with award-winning producers, the 90 minutes consist of nine films designed to present both the negative results of addiction and an encouraging look at addiction as a treatable brain disease, focusing on the major medical and psychological advances in treatment.

Moving from emergency rooms to living rooms and research laboratories, the documentary follows the trail of an illness that afflicts so many. Surveys by several leading health organizations show that one in 10 Americans over age 12 has substance dependence or abuses drugs and one in four has a family member struggling with the disease.

Among the impressive films airing Thursday is Saturday Night in a Dallas ER, directed by Jon Alpert. The setting is Parkland Memorial Hospital, which has more than 30,000 injury-related emergency-room visits annually, nearly half of them involving drugs or alcohol. One patient is a teen accident victim who had downed more than 15 whiskey shots.

The Science of Relapse, a film by Eugene Jarecki and Susan Froemke, offers a more clinical, scientific approach to the problem.

Dr. Anna Childress, a neuroscientist, explores why substance abusers find it so difficult to stop. She uses brain-imaging technology to demonstrate how the disrupted "stop/go" circuitry of an addict's brain can be a key to understanding relapse.

The project partners with HBO are the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute of Alcohol and Alcoholism.

Dr. Nora Volkow, director of NIDA, notes: "Some people don't want to speak about addiction or compare it to other chronic diseases. Addiction is a disease, a treatable disease, and needs to be understood."

In addition to its regular HBO showing, Addiction will be streamed on HBO.com and will be available on podcasts and on digital services through on-demand. Addiction, along with interview programs with scientists and reports on successful treatment programs, will be aired on HBO2 through Sunday and for several weeks. Schedules of specific programs can be found onscreen during HBO's presentations.

Networks have been hailed many times for producing landmark programming. There's no doubt that HBO, using its numerous electronic sources, has produced a series that goes far beyond the simple landmark designation.

Dusty's picks for tonight

If you have a doomsday mentality, you'll probably enjoy tonight's installment of CBS' Jericho (7 p.m., CBS 4). After reports surface about nuclear attacks on Iran and North Korea, a group of Marines arrives in the Kansas town.

What's their mission? Everyone wonders.

• On a more upbeat note, the thoroughly entertaining Sit Down Comedy With David Steinberg (8 p.m., TV Land) welcomes Jon Stewart for an hourlong session of anecdotes and reminiscences.

TV term

Add newpeat to the television lexicon.

In an effort to boost ratings of the award-winning The Office, NBC will broadcast two previously aired half- hour episodes as a re-edited hourlong "special" Thursday (7 p.m., 9News).

The hour will be a mix of the two previous half-hour episodes and "snippets" cut from previous tapings, along with a new introduction.

Is this the comedy wave of the future?

Today's nostalgia

The 10 most-watched network TV series in March 1957:

1 I Love Lucy (CBS)

2 The Ed Sullivan Show (CBS)

3 General Electric Theater (CBS)

4 The $64,000 Question (CBS)

5 December Bride (CBS)

6 Alfred Hitchcock Presents (CBS)

7 I've Got a Secret (CBS)

8 Gunsmoke (CBS)

9 The Perry Como Show (NBC

10 Dragnet (NBC)

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