"Someone in the Soviet leadership realized that the general secretary was going off the rails"

"Mr. Andropov knew what Mr. Kissinger did not: Mr. Brezhnev had developed an addiction to sleeping pills that, combined with alcohol, was undermining his ability to think straight. Mr. Andropov learned of the addiction weeks before the war in the Middle East but refused to intervene. Mr. Brezhnev’s erratic behavior during the war convinced Mr. Andropov of the dangers of inaction."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/09/opinion/stumbling-toward-armageddon.html