Dry - by Augusten Burroughs
Published:
Dry - by Augusten Burroughs
Read: 2025-03-13
Recommend: 10/10
Augusten Burroughs deals with a topic that I am very interested in - addiction. The English language used in the book is just beautiful. Its richness and nuance resembles the meticulous unfolding of a movie, scene by scene. Now I want to keep on reading his other non-fiction books.
Notes
Here are some text that I highlighted in the book:
It was like the drunk side of my brain was trying to act distracting and entertaining, so the business side wouldn’t realize it was being held hostage by a drunk.
“Because,” he explains, “you, the person, are good. And I love you the person. But unfortunately, in order to get you the person, I also have to put up with you the drunk. I think this could be a real transformation, if you take it seriously.”
I tell them I drink all the time, it’s only recently become a problem and I could probably stop on my own but my office sort of pushed me into this, so that’s why I’m going to rehab instead of those alcoholic meetings. In the middle of the conversation, I open a third ale. I cup my hand over the mouthpiece so they don’t hear the tab of the ale being popped. It dawns on me that this is a slightly contrary action. Like stopping into Baby Gap before having an abortion.
“It’s your fault I’m going. I caught this from you.” He exhales loudly into the phone, and I can feel him move further along up the family tree, instantly branching out to become a distant relative.
The animal portion of my brain seizes control and my blood is filled with hatred molecules. “Do you remember the time we were in the car together and you said you were gonna kill the thing that meant the most to my mother and you glared at me and sped up? Heading for a rock? And I had to jump out of the fucking car? When I was like nine, you motherfucker,” I spat. More silence. Then he growls, “I did no such thing and you know it. You just make crap up, and I’m very tired of it, very tired.” I know he remembers. “What about the cigarette burn on the bridge of my nose, between my eyes?” Silence, except I swear I hear the thin pulse of the artery in his neck beating against the phone. “I do not know what you are talking about.” But the tone of his voice does not match his words. His tone says yes.
When I was much younger, maybe six, I was sitting on his lap in the La-Z-Boy and he very slowly brought his Marlboro toward my face, aimed the tip between my eyes and landed. I had forgotten about this until I was twenty and had eczema. I went to a dermatologist for the rash. She said, “What’s this?” as she touched my scar. My mind went absolutely blank. The kind of blank where it’s not that you’re forgetting something, but your mind is not allowing you to remember. It’s a thicker, dumber blank. Like trying to run underwater in a dream. “I don’t know, just a mole or a glitch or something,” I said dismissively. She leaned so close to my face that I could see the individual pores of her skin. “No, this is a burn, this is definitely an old burn.” I told her it couldn’t be a burn. I used the same tone of voice I would have if she’d told me that I was pregnant. But that night, I went home and got very drunk. And that’s when I saw the burning tip of the cigarette. And I knew it wasn’t because I was drunk that I was imagining it, it was because I was drunk and my own head was out of the way and I could remember. This is maybe one of the best things to ever come of my drinking. Or maybe it’s one of the worst.
Just sit back, close your eyes and relax. Try to think of something calming.” I think of an icy martini, single olive dead center at the bottom. There’s a gentle quiver of the surface tension as the liquid threatens to—but doesn’t—spill over the edges.
They stick their hands out and say things. I keep repeating my name and that I’m from New York. I believe that I am meeting people, shaking their hands, but I have left my body and am operating purely on muscle memory.
The gym is filled with boxes and folding chairs, stacked in rows against the wall. I see, in the far corner, a small bench press without weights. The basketball hoops have no nets, boxes stacked high beneath them. I feel fairly certain I am the only person ever to have broken a sweat in this gym. And my sweat is from panic.
Why does this have to be so complicated? I wish they could just cut your “drinker” out of you. Like having a kidney stone removed. You check into the hospital as an outpatient, get anesthetized from the waist down, they put headphones on you and you listen to Enya. Fifteen minutes later, the doctor lifts the headphones off and shows you the small, turd-colored organ he extracted from somewhere inside you. I see it looking like a snail.
“The amount of alcohol you consumed would be associated with late-stage alcoholism. You were very much in danger of alcoholic poisoning, an overdose. And I’m glad you’re here, too.” Tracy looks at me with genuine warmth and understanding. Something else, too. Something that makes me think we could have really partied together.
I can feel the artery on the left side of my head pulsing, moments away from bursting into an aneurysm. Whatever Librium was in my system has already been metabolized by my urban liver. My liver wastes no time. It’s the New York City cabdriver of livers. I’m thinking it can’t get any worse than this. But of course, then it absolutely does.
Your addict wants you all to itself. So when you talk about the bottles, or any other consequence of drinking, you are in effect, ‘telling on your addict.’ ” I play along. I try to imagine a nasty little man living inside my forehead, kicking the backs of my eyeballs for telling.
He turned to face me. “I love you too, Augusten.” Then gently he said, “But I’m not in love with you. I’m sorry about what’s happened between us. It shouldn’t have happened. I should never have let things get sexual, A. And B, I should have never made you feel that we could be anything more than friends. It’s my fault.” I was trapped because I did love him, but also now wanted to cause the most massive harm possible. You will love me, I thought. And then it will be too late. It went on like this for a year. The sex, always intense, fast and hungry. And the friendship. But no romance.
She says we need to begin designing a “re-entry” plan for when I leave rehab and go back out into the real world. I think of the space shuttle, burning up as it breaks through the earth’s hard atmosphere upon re-entry.
All of a sudden, I feel overwhelmed with the work involved with mental health. Therapy four times a week, AA meetings every day for the rest of my life. “It seems like, I don’t know, so much work.” “You found the time to drink every day,” she points out. True. But that was fun. That’s why they call it Happy Hour. I feel like I’m in prison and have just learned than upon my release, I will be on house parole for the rest of my life, wearing one of those electronic ankle things. Free, but not. I guess I thought that rehab would stop me from drinking like an alcoholic. I thought it would teach me how to drink like a normal person.
It’s not difficult to hear the hurt in his voice. “I have to go,” are probably the four words I use most with him. The thought that normally accompanied these words was, Because I need a drink. Now it’s because I need to go talk about needing a drink. It’s like alcohol gets in the way even when it’s out of the way.
My feeling at the end is that AA is utterly amazing. Complete strangers getting together in rooms at all hours and saying things that are so personal, so incredibly intimate. This is the kind of stuff that happens in a relationship after a few months. But people here open up right away, with everyone. It’s like some sort of love affair, stripped of the courtship phase. I feel bathed in safety. I feel like I have this secret place I can go and say anything in the world, about anything I feel, and it’s okay. And this makes me feel grateful to be an alcoholic. And this is a very odd feeling.
Greer is wearing a smile, as opposed to having one.
After Perry Street, we find a place around the corner from my apartment that has a Ping-Pong table, so we go there and play. We find a rhythm and actually keep the ball going for a good five minutes at a time. Ping: Hayden thinks he’ll get some work from Carl Fisher. Pong: I had a slow day at work. Ping: Hayden went to the library and checked out some books. Pong: I think I’m really attracted to a crack addict in my group therapy. Dribble, dribble, dribble, the ball bounces off the table onto the floor. “What are you talking about, what crack addict?”
Inside, it’s so dark my eyes need time to adjust. For a moment I stand there in this unknown void. Gradually, it reveals itself to me. An expansive bar begins near the door and stretches back into blackness for what is probably miles.
The bartender glides over, as if propelled by silent jets attached to the heels of his Prada shoes. All bone structure and musculature, he’s a head shot that can also mix drinks. “What can I getcha?” he asks, using just one corner of his mouth. I am sure he has stood in front of his mirror for many hours saying this exact phrase, using this exact side of his mouth. If you asked, I bet he’d describe himself as A few degrees left of cool.
And lately, I get annoyed with AA, because even though I’ve been going every day, I haven’t really made any close friends. Or actually, any friends. It seems much easier to make friends in bars. I have to keep reminding myself that these AA people are exactly like bar people—they are bar people—except their bars have all been shut down. And I have to admit, this makes them less interesting to me.
I never lost time like that before. I never lost time like that again.
All week, I am at the office until after eight. I cancelled my group therapy and have totally blown off AA meetings. To be honest, the meetings are just not doing much for me. I mean, they’re depressing. Why talk about not drinking all the time? Why not just not drink? Besides, my life is too stressful now to deal with AA. And anyway, I’m fine. I’m going crazy, yeah. But in terms of the not-drinking thing, I’m fine. Fine, fine, fine.
“Why?” is all I can think to say. He says nothing. I look at him, sprawled back on his sofa. A raging crack addict, group therapy dropout disguised as a Banana Republic ad. His toes wriggle in his socks and my first thought is, I want to snip them off with hedge trimmers. Not only does he not deserve to wriggle his toes, he does not deserve to have toes. He deserves to have stumps. He cannot be trusted with toes because they enable him to walk and thus seek out the company of crack dealers.
“What difference does it make if I give up on you? You’ve already given up on yourself.” This seems like the right, dramatic thing to say. I am a movie of the week.
I think part of the reason I’m attracted to Foster is because he’s such a mess. I mean, the people I have loved in my life have never been easy to love. I’m not used to normal. I’m used to disaster. I don’t know, as messed up as he is, he’s also sort of exciting, sort of a challenge. I’m accustomed to working for love.
He told me, I love you. Then he called me all manic saying how much I’d changed his life. And now, nothing. So I’m going up and down, my mood completely dependent upon his sobriety or lack of. He’s like this incredibly beautiful Van Gogh painting with slashes all through it. True, it’s a Van Gogh. But look at those slashes.
It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to dim light. I make my way to the bar and sit on one of the stools. I set my bag on the bar and my hands are shaking. I can’t do this. I can’t be here. It’s not worth it. “What’ll it be?” the weathered old bartender asks in a gravelly voice, the skin around his eyes creased, his mustache yellowed from years of exhaling Marlboros. And I am torn. I am split down the middle. Anxiety spreads through me, as if whatever had been containing it cracked, burst. My heart races in my chest. Just one shot. I could order just one shot. I need to take the edge off. The edge is too sharp. I’m cutting myself with this edge. “A Diet Coke,” I say after a long pause. The bartender looks at me for just an instant longer. It’s as if he has been able to read my mind, knows what’s going on inside of me. And it occurs to me that he’s probably seen this many times before: the demons wrestling. When he sets my Diet Coke on the bar he says, “Enjoy.” I suck through the thin straw. I suck until only the ice is left.
Over all of this, a song: uplifting and motivational. Product name mentioned within the first six seconds and repeated eight times. A catchy tune, designed to be permanently tattooed on the brain. A tumor that causes one to purchase.
I want a drink. Rubbing alcohol, even. That is my default, wanting a drink. And no amount of rehab, no AA meeting will ever be able to switch that default to, say, orange juice. I want a fucking drink. I don’t want to go to the hospital to see Pighead. I want to go to a bar.
It dawns on me that the two people I most obsess over are seriously involved with narcotics. I put my head on his chest, listen to his heart. It’s beating so fast that I’m afraid just listening it to it will make mine beat along with it and I’ll have a heart attack.
Wendy crosses her legs. “One of the qualities I have seen in my experience as a therapist, one of the ‘traits’ if you will, is that people I associate with long-term sobriety all have a sense of perspective in common. As if they can step back from their life, step back from the play, and watch the performance and make judgment calls. You seem to me to have this quality.” This feels like the closest I will ever come to a stamp of approval. I almost wish she’d write this down on her letterhead so I could carry it with me, as evidence of emotional health and stability. I could then pull it out on the third date, when a future potential boyfriend’s questions and doubts arise. “How do you feel about this being our last session?” she asks. I am wary and feel this could be a trick question. I must be careful how I answer, because I do not want her to revoke my mental health.
At work the next day, I feel edgy and worried and frustrated and angry and sad and confused and relieved and every other emotion on that damn rehab feeling chart. Sometimes, a few feelings collect and have a sort of party in my head. Then it seems they all leave and I have no feelings at all. I remember in rehab someone saying that nine months was a turning point. A lot of people go back out and use at the nine-month point. It’s like the seven-year itch. I think this must be because we have nine months programmed into us from our time in the womb. After nine months we are ready to make a dramatic change. Be born, or go get drunk.
And suddenly he’s asleep, which does not make me feel better. Because falling asleep that fast is more accurately termed “losing consciousness.”
Yet instead of rage, I feel sorry for him. He’s caught in the same place I was caught. It dawns on me that to be with him would be like living with my old self again. I go and sit next to him. I want to think of something profound to say, but nothing comes to me.
Pighead is operating in slow, drooling motion. Within the space of a month he has been transformed into a skeleton without bladder control. The only reason he’s home instead of still at the hospital is because they ran out of tests to perform. Life is a question mark now.
On my way home, I surprise myself by stopping into a liquor store on Seventh Avenue and Twelfth. I surprise myself even further by buying a pint of Black Label. On the way out, I think how strange it is that liquor stores never redecorate. They never get cool-ized. But then, they don’t need to be hip. They are like urinals—people will go there no matter what.
I finish the pint and want more. I feel only slightly bad that I have done this. And I’m not sure that all of me believes I actually have. But then another part of me feels like it’s no big deal. Because there are certain facts that I need to begin grasping. Fact number one is that my best friend is not doing so well. Fact number two is that I didn’t see it coming because I was too busy doing absolutely nothing of any importance. Fact number three is that I don’t want to be sober anymore. I do not want front-row-center seats for the crucifixion. I would like to conveniently sidestep what is happening in my life at the moment.
I stand by the door looking at the other guys who are themselves looking for other guys. The whole thing suddenly strikes me as beyond sad. All of this exposed loneliness. These raw nerves firing into the dark.
Pighead’s brother is standing next to me in ICU. We are both standing in the doorway to Pighead’s room. Pighead himself is attached to many busy machines.
ICU is dark, though pulsing with the electronics of life support. I get the feeling that nobody here is sleeping. They’re just unconscious. I walk softly, trying not to let my sneakers squeak against the tile.
“I have to go,” I tell him and hang up. I walk into the bathroom and look in the mirror. “He’s dead,” I tell my reflection. “Do you understand? Pighead is dead. You will never see him again. How does this make you feel?” My reflection says nothing.
He lights the white rocks at the end of the pipe and I draw. A dreamy, warm smoke fills my lungs and goes immediately to a place inside of me that I have been unable to reach my entire life. The taste is both chemical and slightly sweet. I hold it in my lungs until I feel vaguely faint and then let it out. This is perfect. Nothing can compare to this.
They walk away, fast. Almost a run, but not quite. But I don’t know why they are afraid. Nothing will happen to them. Or me. I feel we are all protected. The alcohol in my system gives me a powerful sense of immunity. I slide the bag containing the crack cocaine into my front pocket and turn around, walking back in the direction I came. Except now I feel more powerful, having the crack in my pocket. But I don’t know how to smoke it on my own, so I feel like I have just bought the most amazing Corvette and I can’t drive a stick. It is a feeling of supreme power together with utter dependence.
I inhaled. And tried to keep the chemical smoke in my lungs for as long as I could, like I was swimming underwater.
“You leaving?” Serena asked when I walked back into the apartment. She had lit a candle and already I could smell the apple scent. “Yup. I gotta go,” I said. I was no longer drunk. I was suddenly extremely sober. “You don’t belong doing what you’re doing,” she told me. There was no blame in her voice. Just kind observation. “I have to change,” I told her. Out of my clothes? Out of my life? “Everybody can change,” she said. I believed her. But why didn’t she believe herself? “You?” I asked. “I’m doin’ what I can do.”
Empty glass vials lined the path to the front steps, a few of them crushed almost back into sand. The geraniums of a crack house. I walked down the sidewalk, the only white man for half a mile. Certainly the only gay white male advertising copywriter wearing a Rolex for half a mile. I walked and I thought, That apartment without a door or electricity is nicer than my apartment. It is more lived in. It is lived in, not rotted in.
“Can I, may I please . . .” And I take the Pighead out of the box. The back of it is flat, engraved. I have to swipe my eyes again to get the blur out so I can read what it says. In the tiniest italic print, it says: I’M WATCHING YOU. NOW STOP DRINKING.
And like a moron, like a wasted disaster of a man, I open my hand and see that my palm is still filled with this obscene mound of gold, this message from the dead. And I bring it to my lips and I kiss it and I say, “I fucking love you.” Except I am not saying this. I am screaming it at the very highest altitude of my lungs. I feel as though helium has been injected into the spaces between my cells. I feel lighter and also slightly intoxicated.
Upstairs, I uncap a bottle and I drink from it as though it is water. And the effect is nearly immediate, but it is not enough. I drink three more in succession. My hands stop shaking and I feel calmer. The hard cider is medicine, now. Like in rehab, this is what they do with the really, really bad cases. They feed them small volumes of alcohol to lessen the physical withdrawal. They call it tapering.
“That’s the bad news,” I tell him. “You can never replace it. The good news is you do learn to live without it. You miss it. You want it. You hang out with a bunch of other crazy people who feel the same way and you live with it. And eventually, you start to sound like a cloying self-help book, like me.”
I nod. “I know, I get like that. I get where I feel like I’m gonna drink anyway, eventually. So I might as well do it now. It’s awful. Sometimes I feel like I have hives in my brain that I can’t scratch.”
“You’re supposed to go to a meeting. I mean, as much as you hate them or if they feel stupid or you just don’t want to go. The thing is, if you go to a meeting, you won’t drink that day. It’s like a minibrainwash. It kind of fixes you for a little while.”