http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/03/wuspols303.xmlexcerpt:
The Budweiser beer heiress has battled prescription drug addiction and illness, and watched as the dirty tricks that derailed her husband's bid for the White House eight years ago engulfed the daughter she adopted from Mother Teresa's orphanage in Bangladesh.
Unlike that campaign, when she seemed a tentative figure in the political arena, she has now emerged as a passionate and articulate speaker, often introducing her husband at his rallies.
Mr McCain's closest aide, Mark Salter, told The Sunday Telegraph: "She's a very effective campaigner. She is absolutely great. When she's around, she can keep him on an even keel."
But her graceful demeanour, reminiscent of the cheerleader she once was, masks a woman who has experienced the extremes that go with a life in the spotlight. In 1994 she admitted that for three years she became addicted to painkillers.
Mrs McCain, 53, blamed her dependency on two back operations and the stress of her peripheral involvement in the so-called Keating Five scandal, in which her husband was accused of receiving donations and lobbying on behalf of a collapsed saving company's disgraced chief.
To make matters worse, it emerged that she had stolen pills from the American Voluntary Medical Team, a third world relief organisation that she had founded. Mrs McCain entered a rehab programme rather than face criminal charges. She later told an interviewer: "The best thing I've ever done is go into recovery and stay drug-free."
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maybe they upped her meds?