NEW YORK — HBO unleashed some of the industry’s best documentary filmmakers to take on the subject of addiction, a project born from the frustration of a top HBO executive whose son has struggled with alcohol and cocaine problems.

The film “Addiction,” an umbrella documentary on the subject, debuts on Thursday (9 p.m. EDT). It stitches together stories shot by leading documentarians D.A. Pennebaker, Rory Kennedy, Barbara Kopple, Jon Alpert, Alan and Susan Raymond and others. HBO has lined up 18 films on the topic, most made specially for the series, to air over the weekend on its cable channels.

It all began with the realization by Sheila Nevins of HBO that she understood little about the problems bedeviling her son David.

David, 26 and a location assistant for “The Sopranos,” has been sober for about a year after a decade of substance abuse problems. Nevins, president of HBO Documentary Films, had tried every approach she could think of to help him. Psychiatrists, rehab centers, tough love — she’d been through it all.

“I was doing all these things and it never occurred to me it was a brain disease,” she said.

Every subsequent relapse meant more heartache.

“I didn’t know the relapse rate was between 75 and 85 percent,” she said. “I didn’t really know. I thought relapse was my failure as a parent and his failure as a child.”

If she didn’t understand — working in an industry where ‘rehab’ is hardly a foreign concept — she figured many others didn’t, either.

Nevins is in a position to spread the word. Her name is frequently heard from the podiums of awards shows, either as she’s thanked for support or picking up her own honor. For her work as a producer, Nevins has received 17 prime-time Emmy Awards, 24 News and Documentary Emmys and 25 Peabody Awards. HBO is one of the premier outlets for documentaries, and she holds the purse strings.

The short films that are a part of “Addictions” include Alpert’s look at a busy Saturday night in a Dallas emergency room; Kennedy and Liz Garbus’ examination of brain imaging; and Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus’ piece on opiate addiction.

“I don’t know about informational programming,” she said. “But I do know documentaries. I thought if there was a way to combine information with the passion of a documentary producer, it would be a great way of getting things across.”

Each of the short pieces included in “Addiction” will be expanded and shown separately through the weekend, along with four other independent documentaries. Also, the network is embarking on a public information campaign with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which has kicked in $1.5 million to the project.