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Dry: A Memoir
Escrito por Augusten Burroughs
Narrado por Augusten Burroughs
Ações de livro
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From the New York Times Bestselling author of Running With Scissors comes the story of one man trying to out-drink his memories, outlast his demons, and outrun his past.
You may not know it, but you've met Augusten Burroughs. You've seen him on the street, in bars, on the subway, at restaurants: a twentysomething guy, nice suit, works in advertising. Regular. Ordinary. But when the ordinary person had two drinks, Augusten was circling the drain by having twelve; when the ordinary person went home at midnight, Augusten never went home at all. Loud, distracting ties, automated wake-up calls and cologne on the tongue could only hide so much for so long.
At the request (well, it wasn't really a request) of his employers, Augusten lands in rehab, where his dreams of group therapy with Robert Downey Jr. are immediately dashed by grim reality of fluorescent lighting and paper hospital slippers. But when Augusten is forced to examine himself, something actually starts to click and that's when he finds himself in the worst trouble of all. Because when his thirty days are up, he has to return to his same drunken Manhattan life — and live it sober. What follows is a memoir that's as moving as it is funny, as heartbreaking as it is true. Dry is the story of love, loss, and Starbucks as a Higher Power.
A Macmillan Audio production.
Ações de livro
Comece a ouvirDados do livro
Dry: A Memoir
Escrito por Augusten Burroughs
Narrado por Augusten Burroughs
Descrição
From the New York Times Bestselling author of Running With Scissors comes the story of one man trying to out-drink his memories, outlast his demons, and outrun his past.
You may not know it, but you've met Augusten Burroughs. You've seen him on the street, in bars, on the subway, at restaurants: a twentysomething guy, nice suit, works in advertising. Regular. Ordinary. But when the ordinary person had two drinks, Augusten was circling the drain by having twelve; when the ordinary person went home at midnight, Augusten never went home at all. Loud, distracting ties, automated wake-up calls and cologne on the tongue could only hide so much for so long.
At the request (well, it wasn't really a request) of his employers, Augusten lands in rehab, where his dreams of group therapy with Robert Downey Jr. are immediately dashed by grim reality of fluorescent lighting and paper hospital slippers. But when Augusten is forced to examine himself, something actually starts to click and that's when he finds himself in the worst trouble of all. Because when his thirty days are up, he has to return to his same drunken Manhattan life — and live it sober. What follows is a memoir that's as moving as it is funny, as heartbreaking as it is true. Dry is the story of love, loss, and Starbucks as a Higher Power.
A Macmillan Audio production.
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Follows Augusten through this travails in alcoholism and recovery. He has a high paying job in advertising but is forced into rehab by his boss. It's either go to rehab or lose the job. We follow him through rehab and then into sober living. He pokes fun of both rehab and the system. He states that he despises AA meeting but we find him attending them again/still at the end of the book. Was sometimes funny, but more often than not was very emotionally trying. Seems to be a very good insight into someone struggling with alcoholism and trying to recover.
I've torn through several alcoholic memoirs recently and while this one is entertaining and revelatory in spots it seems to drag more than others. For Damaged Gay Memoirists, David Sedaris is the better bet for consistent entertainment.
In Dry, Augusten Burroughs recounts how he is forced into to rehab or will lose his job and how this experience opens his eyes to his alcoholism. The book continues on to describe his recovery efforts as he faces some heavy emotional personal hurdles. This second memoir from Burroughs jumps ahead in time from the ending of his previous book Running with Scissors, picking up in the middle of his advertising career, which manages to be successful and lucrative despite his burgeoning alcohol problem. It's not necessary to read his first book to jump right in to this one, but I think it helps to know his background to both understand how Burroughs got to this point in his life and to sympathize with him even when he's at his worse. There are a couple moments here and there where Burroughs does touch on a few "highlights" of his abusive, dysfunctional childhood, which serve to provide the necessary context for this moment in his life.Once again, I found Burroughs's work to be compelling, not just for its plot but because Burroughs's writing style flows so easily. He is concise and to the point, but his writing isn't simplistically dull. Burroughs peppers the book with interesting metaphors, colorful allusions, dark humor, and moments of insightful clarity. I haven't read much by the way of recovery memoirs, so this book's thematic content was new to me and provided much by the way of food for thought. While not overly emotional in his telling, Burroughs's story is nevertheless one of emotional highs and lows as it takes its readers along the path of his rehab, recovery, relapse, and further recovery.
This book wasn't nearly as good as his first. The humor is lacking and his adult life story, although entertaining, was sad but without the dark and biting humor of his first memoir. I would recommend it only for those who have read the first book and want to find out how he ended up, which was also a bit disappointing. Overall, the writing style is lacking in quality and the story is one that can't add up to his other work. He is no David Sedaris!
Wow. Burroughs' life is...messed up. This is the story of his...addiction to alcohol (et al), how he went to rehab, and how he relapsed...but then got back on track.
I must say, this is a book that kept me wanting to read more and more. Burroughs's life is one I am sad that anyone has had to live. And yet, what I think is the most appealing about his stories is that he is not welled up in depression. He is frank and open about his feelings...and despite his faults (shallowness, alcoholism), I can't help but root him on. I want him to succeed, and I was crushed when he relapsed.
A good read, for sure.
I must say, this is a book that kept me wanting to read more and more. Burroughs's life is one I am sad that anyone has had to live. And yet, what I think is the most appealing about his stories is that he is not welled up in depression. He is frank and open about his feelings...and despite his faults (shallowness, alcoholism), I can't help but root him on. I want him to succeed, and I was crushed when he relapsed.
A good read, for sure.
This is a great read! It will make you laugh, cry and pull you in the whole way through.
Very real. Reminds me of various people I've met, melted down into one Gay Man in NYC. Going through pure hell + entering recovery. A hope "read"- may many active alcoholics and addicts listen deeply + drink of this wisdom.
Great book for when you feel like your own life is wreck and you need someone else to be a wreck with you.
This was one of those books I just couldn’t put down. I finished it in a few days and was sad when it was over! Great writing, dark and witty and funny. Loved it!
Holy shit, how am I going to review this? I guess the first thing you need to know is this: I am recovering alcoholic. Dry is the story of an active alcoholic who becomes a recovering alcoholic and then an active alcoholic and then a recovering alcoholic, etc. etc. It's a memoir, these things are true, and boy did I have a lot of feelings about it.In fact, I don't know that I've ever flagged as many passages in a book as I did in Dry. No, wait, that's not true - I think I used about five hundred in that book about potatoes that was one of the vilest things I've ever read. Still! So many fucking flags!First, I should say that the writing is good. I like my memoirs written pretty novel-like, you know, with dialog and such, and Burroughs does that well. The story is fast paced, the characters are fleshed out and complex and very real. You'd think that characters who are literally real would generally translate to "real" on the page but it's harder than you may think. Burroughs does it well.I identified with so much in this book:His inability to separate himself from his drinking. "The thing is, I know I drink too much, or what other people consider too much. But it's so much a part of me, it's like saying my arms are too long. Like I can change that?"His feelings in early sobriety that he'll just get sober for a little bit and then all will be well. "Now I'm thinking rehab could turn out to be great. I'll dry out for thirty days and it'll be like going to a spa. When I come home, I'll be able to drink more like a normal person drinks."The way he compartmentializes his life. "I also can't ever have any of my friends meet each other. I have to keep them all separate. And they all think this is a little strange, but for some reason it's normal to me."His attempts to convince himself that since he's not as bad as 'those people', he can't be a 'real alcoholic.' "I would never drink cologne and therefore am not an 'alcoholic' and am, in fact, in the wrong place. This is clearly the place for the die-hard, cologne-drinking alcoholics. Not the global-brand-meeting-misser alcoholics, like me."His (incorrect) assumptions of what Alcoholics Anonymous would be like. "I'm afraid what I see in my head might be close to the truth: Held downstairs in the dank, unused basements of churches, I envision a shamed group of people wearing long dark coats and old Foster Grant sunglasses, sitting in folding metal chairs. Everyone is clutching a white Styrofoam cup filled halfway with bad coffee. Filled only halfway so the coffee doesn't slosh out, due to the fact that everyone's hands are trembling from withdrawal."How completely baffled he is with his drinking. How it makes no sense to him. A good example of this takes place when he returns home from rehab and sees bottles lined up all over his apartment. "My apartment is my secret. It's filled with empty liquor bottles. Not five of six. More like three hundred. Three hundred one-liter bottles of scotch, occupying all floor space not already occupied by a bed or a chair. Sometimes I myself am stunned by the visual presentation. And the truly odd part is that I really don't know how they got there. You'd think I'd have taken each bottle down to the trash room when it was empty. But I let two collect. And because two is nothing, I let three collect. And on it went. The ironic thing is that I'm not the kind of person who saves things."The fact that he had to learn how to understand emotions. This was true for me. I could tell you if I felt good or bad, but in early sobriety there was no additional nuance to my feelings. Was I angry or scared? No idea! In Dry, Burroughs discusses how his rehab folks dealt with this issue. "It was illustrated with about twenty different faces, drawn with simple black lines and displaying an emotion. Under each face was a caption. Happy. Sad. Jealous. Angry. Confused. Afraid. 'When you're wondering what it is you're feeling at any given moment, simply pull out this chart and find the face that fits your mood.' So it's basically an alcoholic-to-normal dictionary. I found myself carrying the thing folded up in the front pocket of my jeans and referring to it constantly, trying to decide what I was feeling."Eventually he begins to really embrace AA and be grateful for it. Once again, something I can relate to. "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."He does an excellent job describing the frustration of trying to talk to non-alcoholic people about alcoholism, like when his friend says, "Yeah, but beer isn't alcohol. It's just . . . beer. I mean, right? That's right, isn't it?"One of the hardest things for me was grieving the loss of alcohol. Even though it was literally killing me, even though it was destroying everything in my life, even though I no longer even wanted to drink, I grieved the loss of it. Burroughs writes, "I miss alcohol. Like it's a person. I feel abandoned. Or rather like I've walked out of a violent, abusive relationship and want to go back because in retrospect, it wasn't really all that violent or abusive."The emptiness that alcoholism creates in us. "'Nothing is enough, nothing is ever enough. It's like there's this pit inside me that can't be filled, no matter what. I'm defective.' 'You're not defective. You're an alcoholic,' he says, as if this neatly explains everything. Which, of course, it does."Early sobriety is hard. It's hard to explain just how hard it is - and not just for the reasons people think of. Yes, not picking up a drink is hard, but learning how to live is hard. The mood swings are ridiculous. Burroughs describes an experience in early sobriety very well, "It's Saturday, noon, and I've been chain-smoking and drinking coffee alcoholically since seven this morning. I've had two pots. I feel electrified, like I've been blow-drying my hair in the bathtub. I'm completely manic - singing along loudly to the radio, but to different songs than they're playing. I'm like somebody who has just decided to stop taking important psychoactive medication. I'm so crazy this morning that Hayden couldn't stand being around me and went out for a walk," and later that chapter, "I hate having feelings. Why does sobriety have to come with feelings? One minute I feel excited, the next I feel terrified. One minute I feel doomed and the next I feel free. I think about lobotomies."
I really enjoyed this book. The ending is heart wrenching for sure. I would give this book 4 1/2 stars if Goodreads allowed it.He has a great writing style and is a king at similes.
A fantastic, funny and sad book that held you from the beginning to end. Burroughs is good at portraying himself as humorously intellectual, socially stunted, and otherwise a genuine soul. Touching. I couldn't wait to see how it ended, while not wanting it to end.
This book captures some of the realities of addiction and recovery without being melodramatic or self-congratulatory. Burroughs manages to poke fun at "the program" and also acknowledge its hard-to-understand power. He is snarky...and also humble. It's funny and touching (and is not cliche, like that description I just offered). Recovery, Burroughs finds, is not easy. But it's possible. And it's worth it. Thanks, Pighead* (*a character in the book, not a slam on the author).
I always tell myself don't start anything by Augusten Burroughs when you have some place to be. Yep, forgot about lunch and my afternoon plans to knock this one out.
At the age of twenty-four, Augusten Burroughs has a lucrative career as a New York City ad man. He also has a serious alcohol problem--and hundreds of empty scotch bottles in his apartment to prove it. Dry is Burroughs' memoir of his youthful struggle with alcoholism, including his stay at a gay-friendly rehab and endless AA meetings in dreary church basements. His addiction is exacerbated by the stress of his job and his conflicted relationships with lovers and friends. But despite the heavy subject matter, this book is very entertaining. Burrough's biting wit and lack of self-pity save the narrative from mawkishness, even when he writes about losing a former lover to AIDS.I really enjoyed this book; so much so that I could hardly put it down. I highly recommend it.
there's a part in 'trainspotting' where the heroin junkie reminds the viewer that all of the "just say no" campaigns fail to mention whey they're addicts in the first place: becase it feels good. burroughs chronicles his soulless life as an ad exec and his escapes into the bottle on both sides of that equation. you're there equally when the high life is a fun time, and for the horrible bottomings-out. chock full of places where you're laughing your ass off, half of which making you wonder if it's really ok to laugh at this, and deeply emotional without being cheezy. highly recommended to anyone who's ever lived with an addict.
Dry indeed, as well as witty, gritty and real. Burroughs, an ad man, unsparingly chronicles his descent into alcoholism and his unlikely redemption. Funny, sad, and very good.
Augusten recounts his battle with alcoholism and attempt to work the program. Despite his sometime arrogance, I can't help but like Augusten. You root for him the whole way through the book. I think that I rooted more for him and Pighead than anything, but a great read.
This is Burroughs's memoir of getting sober, of giving up alcohol and learning to live with alcoholism. Treatment comes to Burroughs when he is given an ultimatum- go to treatment or lose his job. And the job is a significant source of the addiction. Burroughs worked in advertising, an industry that he portrays as high-ego, high-stress, alcohol-soaked, and drug-addicted. As with anyone else, Burroughs finds sobriety to be a difficult process. His efforts to stay dry are complicated by the fact that one of his close friends is dying, and one of his more obnoxious colleagues continues to try and tempt him to drink. The book offers a gritty look at the day-to-day process of sobriety. This is not a book about rehab, it's a book about what happens after rehab. There's definitely suspense laced throughout this book- will Augusten fall off the wagon or won't he? This book also offers a rather interesting look at the over-the-top world of New York advertising. If you didn't already find advertising loathsome, you probably will after reading this book.
Frightening, traumatic, moving, humorous and for one who has been there, a stark reminder. The bset book this year by far.
I've found that this author's memoirs have real staying power. I believe it's because he writes with such immediacy, the reader is right there with him both when he has his epiphanies and when he has his setbacks.
Just getting into this. I like the author's humorous style of writing, even when things couldn't be going worse. It's hard not to laugh and yet at the same time feel sorry for him.
I have read "Dry" about five times, and I just can't stop. I love it. I love Burroughs' honest and wryly humorous writing style, his fascinating life story, and the complexity of the relationships he weaves throughout his book. This is, in my opinion, his most touching book, detailing his stay in a rehab center for drug and alcohol addiction, at the same time as his best friend is dying of AIDS. Burroughs really puts himself out there in this incredibly personal book and makes readers feel what he's feeling.
This is one of my favorite books of all time. I have it on audio book and I think I've listened to it somewhere around thirty times! I always like it when authors read their own books because I feel that it gives the reading more life. I liked this one better than Running With Scissors because it was as vile. It's really humorous and self-deprecating in an endearing way.
Augusten Burroughs has a talent for describing events with a sickening realism. Dry: A Memoir is a shining example of Burroughs talent. The book takes a dive into the life of alcohol-fueled workaholic and binge drinking Burroughs only days before an intervention sends him to rehab. The reader experiences the ups and downs of his journey and watches Burroughs troubled existence as he stumbles across his path to recovery. Describing the book as emotional is somewhat unrealistic, as it extends deeper than the emotions that most of us can comprehend. Dry shows the cycles that Burroughs must travel through on his trip toward sobriety and the pitfalls that await him along the way. Dry also gets deeply personal diving into Burrough's personal life, his career life, and his love life. Burroughs spares nothing revealing his own personal successes and failures along with the most traumatic events that leave him teetering on the brink of relapsing. Dry is at times painful, and you find yourself wanting to scream advice at Burroughs regarding his slip ups and the perils of substance abuse. Instead the reader is relegated to the sidelines forced to witness a series of mishaps and poor choices as Burroughs stumbles. It isn't all bad though. Dry balances Burrough's failing with his successes and his redemption. Dry is also uplifting as it shows the control that Burroughs regains over his life. Dry a moving narrative. Burroughs does a spectacular job of conveying an extremely powerful experience through his own snarky sense of humor. I was a fan of Running with Scissors and I was a fan of Dry, but the Dry most certainly maintains a darker appeal. Dry isn't a light read, but it's certainly worth reading. It's riveting. It's harsh. It's realistic in an emotional way that most authors try to shield us from.
loved it, loved it, loved it - he's so awesome. I wish I could meet him.
About Augusten Burrough's alcoholic trip to sobriety - with temptations all around him all the time.His voice is so funny, witty, at times, poignant and sad that make you want to keep reading more.As much as I enjoyed Running with Scissors, Dry is my favorite by him so far.Good read.
Running with Scissors is Burrough's memoir of his extremely fucked-up childhood, and this book is about his alcoholism, with occasional PSTD-like flashbacks to some of those childhood memories. He works in advertising and drinks constantly; his employers stage an intervention; he goes to rehab and does really well with it, until he doesn't. It reads pretty honest, and I got a sense of what he meant when he talked about struggling to feel his own emotions--he's believable not understanding when he's in love and struggling with whether he can trust what he thinks he's feeling.
I am truly a fan of Augusten Burroughs. I was hooked after reading Running with Scissors and i just couldn't get enough so i ran out and picked up Dry. It didn't let me down at all. I was roped in half way through the first chapter and i couldn't put it down. now like i said I'm a fan of Burroughs so i might be a little biased but I would suggest this book in a heartbeat.
I practically inhaled this book - it was very well done. Interestingly, I figured out that I hated Running With Scissors by the end because he was probably drunk while writing it, and he was apparently a mean obnoxious drunk. About quitting alcohol, and falling off into the depths of addiction, and quitting again. I bet he won't make it though.