[Archive 2007-10-12] Augusten Burroughs on addiction, writing, his family and his new book

Historical archive — originally published 2007-10-12. This report records what was known on that date. It is not current news; subsequent events may have changed the situation. Wikinews closed in May 2026.

With a memoirist like Burroughs, even this is a challenge. What parts of his life he has not written about himself, other interviewers have strip-mined. When we met for dinner at Lavagna in the East Village, I explained to Augusten this issue. I suggested we make the interview more of a conversation to see if that would be more interesting. "Instead of you in the catbird seat," I said, "let's just talk."

We struck an instant rapport. What set out to be an hour and half interview over dinner had turned into four hours of discussion about our lives similarly lived. I removed half of the interview: the half that focused on me.

David Shankbone: It's difficult to be creative and innovative. When you come up with an idea and then come across a place where it has already been done, how do you overcome disenchantment that can ruin your inspiration?

Augusten Burroughs: It's funny; back when I was in advertising that was the one thing I wanted to be: original. I didn't own a television and I never watched commercials. In advertising everyone studies the awards annuals, which are hardcover compendiums of all the best advertising examples. I would never read them when I first got in. I didn't want to be polluted, and I think it’s like that with the writing, but much less--I don't think about it to that extent. The way I work best is not the way I wish I worked best. The way I actually work best is to not think, but just to do. Dry was really the first book I ever wrote, and the reason for that is because I was 30, and I got out of rehab, and it was the first time I had been sober in my adult life. I hadn't been sober since I was …16…I had been a nightly drinker from 16 on. And I was 30--

AB: That was when I was going all the time, and then at 17 it was every night. I would drink every single night. And by 18, 19, I was an alcoh--I needed it. I needed to always drink. So I went to rehab when I was 30, and when I got out I was living over here on Third Avenue and Tenth Street, in this really crappy little apartment. I didn't know how to do anything at all. I was horrified by that. I couldn't date anybody, because I was so damaged. I have my background, my history--I could never get through the third date with that. "Tell me about your family. Tell me about your past." You know? It was like a deal-breaker by the third date, because it was just too much for one person to go through and remain sane. So I felt already ruined. And then, on top of that, I was now sober for the first time, so--

AB: Yes. I was much worse than I ever had been. First of all, when I got sober, that's when I started to write. I had this just manic energy; if I went downstairs to get cigarettes--I smoked at that time-- I would be gone ten minutes, and I would spend the next four hours writing about it, just the tiniest detail, everything. Everything I did, I wrote about. I was working, so I would email the document to myself, pick it up at work and keep on writing. It was like a security blanket. Everything I had was this stupid journal. When I relapsed, I stopped writing completely, and I started drinking and doing drugs I had never done before.

AB: Yeah, as happens, and I got to the point where I started to develop really serious physical symptoms. I began hallucinating; I had cardiac symptoms, and I got alcohol poisoning--and I knew that I'd end up having a heart attack. My heart started beating very irregularly and then stopping and starting--

AB: I knew, this is how you die. This is it. I always wondered, how do you die from alcohol? They always say it's a terminal illness, but assuming you don't drive, how do you actually die? Well, now I was starting to see how. My system was shot, you could see my liver outlined in the mirror when I stood up, and I was a real mess, and--

DS: You saw all this, but how long did it take before you started saying, 'I need to stop'?

AB: What happened is I got alcohol poisoning; I began hallucinating spiders on my ceiling. I went up and Googled 'spiders, alcohol' and saw that that was a symptom of late-stage alcoholism, when it's chronic. People in the very last stages of their alcoholism, of their illness, often hallucinate spiders; it's a common hallucination. And it freaked me out. I developed hives, I was shaking and I was more physically sick than I've ever been in my life.

Source and licence

Text adapted from Augusten Burroughs on addiction, writing, his family and his new book by Wikinews contributors under CC BY 2.5. Paragraphs have been selected and abridged, and formatting adjusted. Contributor history.