Army Captain John Mooney, Jr., M.D., returns from World War II a heroic surgeon, highly decorated for his bravery and the wounds he received saving soldiers in fierce combat all across Europe. In addition to his battle scars, he returns with another war-induced malady. The drugs and alcohol he took to handle his own pain have unknowingly turned him into an alcoholic and drug addict. He marries a beautiful Georgia country girl, a young nurse who loves to drink and party. At first, success, fame, money and excitement fill their lives. But then their passionate love for each other begins to collide with their passionate love for their addictions to alcohol and drugs. Sheer chaos follows.

One desperate night in a cheap, dirty motel, they almost die from convulsions trying to detox each other from their uncontrollable compulsions. An ambulance gets them to a hospital in time. The physician begins signing himself in and out of mental institutions while his wife becomes addicted to electric shock therapy from the highs she gets from the injections of Sodium Pentothal. On the verge of losing his surgical skills, his lucrative medical practice and their three young sons, John Mooney is sent to Federal prison on drug felony charges for writing illegal prescriptions for narcotics. There behind bars he finds the miracle of recovery and redemption . . . the solution for himself, his wife and the thousands of others like themselves they would go on to save.