Above is an illus­tra­tion by artist ~cal­tron (Isam S. Prado) of William Bur­roughs’ novel Junky.

““The ques­tion is fre­quently asked: Why does a man become a drug addict?
The answer is that he usu­ally does not intend to become an addict. You don’t wake up one morn­ing and decide to be a drug addict. It takes at least three months’ shoot­ing twice a day to get any habit at all. And you don’t really know what junk sick­ness is until you have had sev­eral habits. It took me almost six months to get my first habit, and then the with­drawal symp­toms were mild. I think it no exag­ger­a­tion to say it takes about a year and sev­eral hun­dred injec­tions to make an addict.”

Six years before he pub­lished his break­through novel, Naked Lunch (1959), William S. Bur­roughs broke into the lit­er­ary scene with Junky (some­times also called Junkie), a can­did, semi-autobiographical account of an “unre­deemed drug addict.” It’s safe to say that the book wouldn’t have seen the light of day if Allen Gins­berg hadn’t taken Bur­roughs under his wing and edited the man­u­script. The book, orig­i­nally pub­lished under the pseu­do­nym “William Lee,” was dis­trib­uted by Ace Books, a pub­lish­ing house that tar­geted New York City sub­way rid­ers. Below, you can lis­ten to Bur­roughs read­ing a three-hour abridged ver­sion of the text.

“The ques­tions, of course, could be asked: Why did you ever try nar­cotics? Why did you con­tinue using it long enough to become an addict? You become a nar­cotics addict because you do not have strong moti­va­tions in the other direc­tion. Junk wins by default. I tried it as a mat­ter of curios­ity. I drifted along tak­ing shots when I could score. I ended up hooked. Most addicts I have talked to report a sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence. They did not start using drugs for any rea­son they can remem­ber. They just drifted along until they got hooked. If you have never been addicted, you can have no clear idea what it means to need junk with the addict’s spe­cial need. You don’t decide to be an addict. One morn­ing you wake up sick and you’re an addict.”

If like me, you can not get enough of William Bur­roughs, I invite you to stay with us a lit­tle longer and watch the fol­low­ing 1983 doc­u­men­tary by Howard Brookner. At the begin­ning of it, you will be able to see William S. Bur­roughs’ first appear­ance on Amer­i­can national tele­vi­sion. Appro­pri­ately, it was on the irrev­er­ent, late-night com­edy show, Sat­ur­day Night Live. I hope you enjoy it.