Aaron Sorkin Works His Way Through the Crisis (2001)
www.nytimes.com

... Less than a week before the scheduled broadcast of the splashy two-part season premiere, Sorkin began writing a new episode that for the first time directly addressed the news. And he insisted that the premiere be delayed so that this new stand-alone episode could run first as a back story for the whole season. Because of all the time and money that had already gone into promoting the original premiere and the fact that NBC could only charge advertisers half price for time on the rerun they had to air instead, the network's decision to accommodate Sorkin was a $10 million act of largess, proffered to a man who barely four months before had been arrested at the Burbank airport with a carry-on bag containing marijuana, hallucinogenic mushrooms and crack cocaine. And Sorkin, who was in rehab six years before, admitted that this was not the first time he had fallen off the wagon. ...

Nonetheless, The West Wing remains one of my fav TV dramas.