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Dry: A Memoir Kindle Edition
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The Tenth Anniversary Edition of the New York Times bestselling book that has sold over half a million copies in paperback.
"I was addicted to "Bewitched" as a kid. I worshipped Darren Stevens the First. When he'd come home from work and Samantha would say, ‘Darren, would you like me to fix you a drink?' He'd always rest his briefcase on the table below the mirror in the foyer, wipe his forehead with a monogrammed handkerchief and say, ‘Better make it a double.'" (from Chapter Two)
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.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPicador
- Publication dateApril 23, 2013
- File size2627 KB
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Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Sometimes when you work in advertising you’ll get a product that’s really garbage and you have to make it seem fantastic, something that is essential to the continued quality of life. Like once, I had to do an ad for hair conditioner. The strategy was: Adds softness you can feel, body you can see. But the thing is, this was a lousy product. It made your hair sticky and in focus groups, women hated it. Also, it reeked. It made your hair smell like a combination of bubble gum and Lysol. But somehow, I had to make people feel that it was the best hair conditioner ever created. I had to give it an image that was both beautiful and sexy. Approachable and yet aspirational.
Advertising makes everything seem better than it actually is. And that’s why it’s such a perfect career for me. It’s an industry based on giving people false expectations. Few people know how to do that as well as I do, because I’ve been applying those basic advertising principles to my life for years.
When I was thirteen, my crazy mother gave me away to her lunatic psychiatrist, who adopted me. I then lived a life of squalor, pedophiles, no school and free pills. When I finally escaped, I presented myself to advertising agencies as a self-educated, slightly eccentric youth, filled with passion, bursting with ideas. I left out the fact that I didn’t know how to spell or that I had been giving blowjobs since I was thirteen.
Not many people get into advertising when they’re nineteen, with no education beyond elementary school and no connections. Not just anybody can walk in off the street and become a copywriter and get to sit around the glossy black table saying things like, “Maybe we can get Molly Ringwald to do the voice-over,” and “It’ll be really hip and MTV-ish.” But when I was nineteen, that’s exactly what I wanted. And exactly what I got, which made me feel that I could control the world with my mind.
I could not believe that I had landed a job as a junior copywriter on the National Potato Board account at the age of nineteen. For seventeen thousand dollars a year, which was an astonishing fortune compared to the nine thousand I had made two years before as a waiter at a Ground Round.
That’s the great thing about advertising. Ad people don’t care where you came from, who your parents were. It doesn’t matter. You could have a crawl space under your kitchen floor filled with little girls’ bones and as long as you can dream up a better Chuck Wagon commercial, you’re in.
And now I’m twenty-four years old, and I try not to think about my past. It seems important to think only of my job and my future. Especially since advertising dictates that you’re only as good as your last ad. This theme of forward momentum runs through many ad campaigns.
A body in motion tends to stay in motion. (Reebok, Chiat/Day.)
Just do it. (Nike, Wieden and Kennedy.)
Damn it, something isn’t right. (Me, to my bathroom mirror at four-thirty in the morning, when I’m really, really plastered.)
* * *
It’s Tuesday evening and I’m home. I’ve been home for twenty minutes and am going through the mail. When I open a bill, it freaks me out. For some reason, I have trouble writing checks. I postpone this act until the last possible moment, usually once my account has gone into collection. It’s not that I can’t afford the bills—I can—it’s that I panic when faced with responsibility. I am not used to rules and structure and so I have a hard time keeping the phone connected and the electricity turned on. I place all my bills in a box, which I keep next to the stove. Personal letters and cards get slipped into the space between the computer on my desk and the printer.
My phone rings. I let the machine pick up.
“Hey, it’s Jim … just wanted to know if you wanna go out for a quick drink. Gimme a call, but try and get back—”
As I pick up the machine screeches like a strangled cat. “Yes, definitely,” I tell him. “My blood alcohol level is dangerously low.”
“Cedar Tavern at nine,” he says.
Cedar Tavern is on University and Twelfth and I’m on Tenth and Third, just a few blocks away. Jim’s over on Twelfth and Second. So it’s a fulcrum between us. That’s one reason I like it. The other reason is because their martinis are enormous; great bowls of vodka soup. “See you there,” I say and hang up.
Jim is great. He’s an undertaker. Actually, I suppose he’s technically not an undertaker anymore. He’s graduated to coffin salesman, or as he puts it, “pre-arrangements.” The funeral business is rife with euphemisms. In the funeral business, nobody actually “dies.” They simply “move on,” as if traveling to a different time zone.
He wears vintage Hawaiian shirts, even in winter. Looking at him, you’d think he was just a normal, blue-collar Italian guy. Like maybe he’s a cop or owns a pizza place. But he’s an undertaker, through and through. Last year for my birthday, he gave me two bottles. One was filled with pretty pink lotion, the other with an amber fluid. Permaglow and Restorative: embalming fluids. This is the sort of conversation piece you simply can’t find at Pottery Barn. I’m not so shallow as to pick my friends based on what they do for a living, but in this case I have to say it was a major selling point.
A few hours later, I walk into Cedar Tavern and feel immediately at ease. There’s a huge old bar to my right, carved by hand a century ago from several ancient oak trees. It’s like this great big middle finger aimed at nature conservationists. Behind the bar, the wall is paneled in this same wood, inlaid with tall etched mirrors. Next to the mirrors are dull brass light fixtures with stained-glass shades. No bulb in the place is above twenty-five watts. In the rear, there are nice tall wooden booths and oil paintings of English bird dogs and anonymous grandfathers posed in burgundy leather wing chairs. They serve a kind of food here: chicken-fried steak, fish and chips, cheeseburgers and a very lame salad that features iceberg lettuce and croutons from a box. I could live here. As if I didn’t already.
Even though I’m five minutes early, Jim’s sitting at the bar and already halfway through a martini.
“What a fucking lush,” I say. “How long have you been here?”
“I was thirsty. About a minute.”
He appears to be eyeing a woman who is sitting alone at a table near the jukebox. She wears khaki slacks, a pink-and-white striped oxford cloth shirt and white Reeboks. I instantly peg her as an off-duty nurse. “She’s not your type,” I say.
He gives me this how-the-hell-do-you-know look. “And why not?”
“Look at what she’s drinking. Coffee.”
He grimaces, looks away from her and takes another sip of his drink.
“Look, I can’t stay out late tonight because I have to be at the Met tomorrow morning at nine.”
“The Met?” he asks incredulously. “Why the Met?”
I roll my eyes, wag my finger in the air to get the bartender’s attention. “My client Fabergé is creating a new perfume and they want the ad agency to join them tomorrow morning and see the Fabergé egg exhibit as inspiration.” I order a Ketel One martini, straight up with an olive. They use the tiny green olives here; I like that. I despise the big fat olives. They take up too much space in the glass.
“So I have to be there in a suit and look at those fucking eggs all morning. Then we’re all going to get together the day after tomorrow at the agency and have a horrific meeting with their senior management. Some global vision thing. One of those awful meetings you dread for weeks in advance.” I take the first sip of my martini. It feels exactly right, like part of my own physiology. “God, I hate my job.”
“You should get a real job,” Jim tells me. “This advertising stuff is putrid. You spend your days waltzing around the Met looking at Fabergé eggs. You make wads of cash and all you do is complain. Jesus, and you’re not even twenty-five yet.” He sticks his thumb and index finger in the glass and pinches the olive, which he then pops in his mouth.
I watch him do this and can’t help but think, The places those fingers have been.
“Why don’t you try selling a seventy-eight-year-old widow in the Bronx her own coffin?”
We’ve had this conversation before, many times. The undertaker feels superior to me, and actually is. He is society’s Janitor in a Drum. He provides a service. I, on the other hand, try to trick and manipulate people into parting with their money, a disservice.
“Yeah, yeah, order us another round. I gotta take a leak.” I walk off to the men’s room, leaving him at the bar.
We have four more drinks at Cedar Tavern. Maybe five. Just enough so that I feel loose and comfortable in my own skin, like a gymnast. Jim suggests we hit another bar. I check my watch: almost ten-thirty. I should head home now and go to sleep so I’m fresh in the morning. But then I think, Okay, what’s the latest I can get to sleep and still be okay? If I have to be there at nine, I should be up by seven-thirty, so that means I should get to bed no later than—I begin to count on my fingers because I cannot do math, let alone in my head—twelve-thirty. “Where you wanna go?” I ask him.
“I don’t know, let’s just walk.”
I say, “Okay,” and we head outside. As soon as I step into the fresh air, something in my brain oxidizes and I feel just the slightest bit tipsy. Not drunk, not even close. Though I certainly wouldn’t attempt to operate a cotton gin.
* * *
We end up walking down the street for two blocks and heading into this place on the corner that sometimes plays live jazz. Jim’s telling me that the absolute worst thing you can encounter as an undertaker is “a jumper.”
“Two Ketel One martinis, straight up with olives,” I tell the bartender and then turn to Jim. “What’s so bad about jumpers? What?” I love this man.
“Because when you move their limbs, the bones are all broken and they slide around loose inside the skin and they make this sort of…” Our drinks arrive. He takes a sip and continues, “… this sort of rumbling sound.”
“That’s so fucking horrifying,” I say, delighted. “What else?”
He takes another sip, creases his forehead in thought. “Okay, I know—you’ll love this. If it’s a guy, we tie a string around the end of his dick so that it won’t leak piss.”
“Jesus,” I say. We both take a sip from our drinks. I notice that my sip is more of a gulp and I will need another drink soon. The martinis here are shamefully meager. “Okay, give me more horrible,” I tell him.
He tells me how once he had a female body with a decapitated head and the family insisted on an open casket service. “Can you imagine?” So he broke a broomstick in half and jammed it down through the neck and into the meat of the torso. Then he stuck the head on the other end of the stick and kind of pushed.
“Wow,” I say. He’s done things that only people on death row have done.
He smiles with what I think might be pride. “I put her in a white cashmere turtleneck and she actually ended up looking pretty good.” He winks at me and plucks the olive from my drink. I do not take another sip from this particular glass.
We have maybe five more drinks before I check my watch again. Now it’s a quarter of one. And I really need to go, I’ll already be a mess as it is. But that’s not what happens. What happens is, Jim orders us a nightcap.
“Just one shot of Cuervo … for luck.”
The very last thing I remember is standing on a stage at a karaoke bar somewhere in the West Village. The spotlights are shining in my face and I’m trying to read the video monitor in front of me, which is scrolling the words to the theme from The Brady Bunch. I see double unless I close one eye, but when I do this I lose my balance and stagger. Jim’s laughing like a madman in the front row, pounding the table with his hands.
The floor trips me and I fall. The bartender walks from behind the bar and escorts me offstage. His arm feels good around my shoulders and I want to give him a friendly nuzzle or perhaps a kiss on the mouth. Fortunately, I don’t do this.
Outside the bar, I look at my watch and slur, “This can’t be right.” I lean against Jim’s shoulder so I don’t fall over on the tricky sidewalk.
“What?” he says, grinning. He has a thin plastic drink straw behind each ear. The straws are red, the ends chewed.
I raise my arm up so my watch is almost pressed against his nose. “Look,” I say.
He pushes my arm back so he can read the dial. “Yikes! How’d that happen? You sure it’s right?”
The watch reads 4:15 A.M. Impossible. I wonder aloud why it is displaying the time in Europe instead of Manhattan.
Copyright © 2003 by Augusten Burroughs
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Review
--O Magazine
"Burroughs is a brilliant writer--wickedly funny, painfully honest, and uber-cool. Without cheapening the hard work and commitment recovery requires, he allows the wry hilarity of his experience to shine brighter than the pain and darkness. I haven’t read anything this sharp, hip, or honest in my life. Count me as a lifelong fan of this courageous writer."
--Elle (Reader's Prize winner for June)
"Beneath the quick-flowing, funny-sad surface of Burroughs' prose lurks considerable complexity...even more compelling than Burroughs' first outing." --Time
"Dry is a stylish memoir about a messy life." --Entertainment Weekly
"Humor and poignancy...we finish the book amazed not only that Burroughs can write so brilliantly, but that he's even alive." --People
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
From AudioFile
Review
“Laughter on the road to sobriety. Mr. Burroughs remains adept at mixing comedy and calamity.” ―Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“Beneath the quick-flowing, funny-sad surface of Burroughs' prose lurks considerable complexity: wherever he goes, whatever he's doing, you can feel how badly he wants to drink-as well as the sadness from which that desire comes and the courage it takes to make the sadness so funny, all at the same time. If anything, Dry is even more compelling than Burroughs' first outing.” ―Lev Grossman, Time
“More than a heartbreaking tale, it's a heroic one. As with its predecessor, we finish the book amazed not only that Burroughs can write so brilliantly, but that he's even alive.” ―People
“A wrenching, edifying journey . . . with the added benefit of being really entertaining.” ―The New York Times Book Review
“A deeper book than Scissors, revealing Burroughs to be a more accomplished writer, creating scenes of real power.” ―Deirdre Donahue, USA Today
“Dry will make readers glad to have Augusten Burroughs in the world, and eager for more.” ―O Magazine
“Augusten Burroughs is a wickedly good writer.... Dry is a great read. Grade: A.” ―Chicago Sun-Times
“I haven't read anything this sharp, hip, or honest in my life. Count me as a lifelong fan of this courageous writer.” ―Elle
About the Author
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Product details
- ASIN : B00BY5QYA0
- Publisher : Picador; 10th Anniversary edition (April 23, 2013)
- Publication date : April 23, 2013
- Language : English
- File size : 2627 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 324 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #97,471 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #65 in Alcoholism (Kindle Store)
- #87 in Biographies & Memoirs of Authors
- #261 in Alcoholism Recovery
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Augusten Burroughs is the author of the autobiographical works "Running with Scissors," "Dry," "Magical Thinking," "Possible Side Effects" and "A Wolf at the Table," all of which were New York Times bestsellers. "Running with Scissors" remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over two consecutive years and was made into a Golden Globe-nominated film starring Annette Bening. His only novel, "Sellevision," is currently in development as a series for NBC. "Dry," Augusten's memoir of his alcoholism and recovery, is being developed by Showtime. In addition, Burroughs is currently creating an original prime-time series for CBS. Augusten's latest book is called "You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas."
Twice named to Entertainment Weekly's list of the funniest people in America, Augusten has also been the subject of a Vanity Fair cover story and a Jeopardy! answer. His books have made guest appearances in two James Patterson novels, one Linkin Park music video, numerous television shows and a porn movie.
Augusten has been a photographer since childhood and many of his images can be seen on his website, www.augusten.com. He lives in New York City.
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I can only barely recall certain things about the family in that-darn bad memory. Did not connect this to this writer then. His brother's book, in a way, was a good read. Helpful for my thinking about autism.
Then after finishing this book I read his mother's blog and webpage and the poems are good. I realize I haven't read "Running With Scissors" when everyone else has, but I read the wiki on it tonight, three interviews with him too including VFair. I read his commentary on his mother. A lot of real bitterness.
But I have to say that whatever they did these parents and kids managed to get into the highly published category.
You or I write about difficult childhoods- it remains babble on a blog. So, somehow I wondered about that. Perhaps in one of the slew of memoirs that Burrough's family have out there- they can consider doing one that could be called " On Plugging Ourselves With Knives" -on just exactly how all this got to print and how a family got so embedded in the notion of being heard just for being-they lead the pack for me right now. Yikes. I'd find that interesting as a place to start. You wonder at a certain point how many different ways one family can mine their years together where things "didn't go well."
Basically for me, here's my story. (Let's see if this way of going holds for the audience)
I had a good friend that finally I just could not take any more. After 16 years I realized I was tired. She's a failed psychologist and a public school teacher that feels she's been wronged all her life. She'd like a rich husband, furniture from Pottery Barn, wealth and to be recognized as smart. Anyway, over time, I was sharing with her a complicated story of someone I was writing to on-line and the fact they were then shocking me by writing they were in re-hab. She worked for awhile as a rehab counselor until she had a crack up and went into teaching in public school-slumming it as she says. I was wanting to know more about addiction, re-hab, AA and so on to understand better the experience I had of this person. Because I realized I had missed something very important.
She kept insisting, as she has insisted, I read Burroughs. Read "Dry." Which clearly she loved. I get why she'd love him. Gutting his family, the deep resentments, the tone of his work, his borderline personality...all of that would be perfect ground for her. Here is someone not worried about the other guy- and terrific at justification. Who admits to things like drinking- with the agenda of procuring your money, attention and to gain sympathy, because, after all he found out life is very unfair. She must read him in utter awe. His life is what she'd like to do. Her drama, sense of exaggeration, the need to tell and retell and tell some more to reshape history. It's all up her alley.
So I didn't read it.
I didn't feel like it.
But after I decided to stop this friendship I thought-it's summer-I'll read it. I am now free from the thirty or forty- five to ten hour phone calls if I say I read it-listening to her talk about her-her damage, her feelings, her reliving what no longer even resembles what she lives.
"Dry" is a recounting of a person who did a lot of stupid things, most especially drinking to the point of nearly extinguishing their humanity. And who handled some bad stuff badly and hurt themselves rather critically. I have no idea at all if what's left has hope-I think he's really so broken- to continue to give him so much attention-it seems practical to do it with a warning label. Attention:Memoir written with an agenda.
I don't think it's such an accomplishment not to understand compassion, loyalty, love, another, generosity of spirit, humility, I don't think you can then listen to him fumble around in a self help position as if he's doing this for YOU. J*sus you must be kidding me. I think he's really desperately ill. But that said, Dry is sarcastic, which is called humorous, it reveals his story of a rehab experience, his recounting of ways to sc*ew up, his insensitivity, his excuses, his damage, his trauma, very little of his understanding what he's missing-a dry martini for sure-thrown right into your eyes. It tells about how he functioned when he had to become sober-which we must assume happened-though not from this, somehow later, and his friend who you see no reason would be a friend nor would you want to friend either really-is dying in the book, then too a rather crappy story of his addiction like affection for a gorgeous guy in the right after rehab days- that he takes up with in therapy who is a crack addict-so he can throw in the sex for more degradation.... That relationship doesn't "work out." Surprise?
I don't know. I just read in an interview that Burroughs wants people to look at themselves after reading this-to look at their addictions-you know-to go somehow help yourself. Objectively-let's face it- he wants you to look at him. Augusten wants to be a rock star.
I don't think he gives a rat's *ass if you are struggling, frankly, and I think he tells you that in ways you can look at objectively. He is broken. And he's not willing to jettison how. But I'll give you my two cents on where to look. Can you show me one place in this book where this person makes you feel real connection to something like a celebration of life, to joy, caring, not that he finally took some interest in his dying friend by recounting he cleaned his poop-oh poor noble suffering Augusten-I mean where you feel that he honestly feels someone else is more important than he is?
I can't.
I just feel like here's an ad man-empty-is selling me this stuff to get wealthy, and to be famous. For the attention.
I don't see him actually sponsoring people, which would be free and take time, or going to work in anonymity for the rest of his life on skid row with addicts-which is actually doing the work, or even talking about it as I know from several friends as it can be to dedicate a life to this...this for me is a lot what I think of when I think of good old Dr. Drew. Because that's what real insight would bring, over accumulation of wealth- I feel him sensationalize the 2000 bottles of whatever as he recounts the old days of addiction for the audience. I suppose I should disclose that I think he's mean, I think he's angry and I think he is really afraid of being an utterly worthless bast*rd-and there's not a lot here to point away from him being more like his parents as he states them than not...
Ok. Did I get a picture of rehab? Not really.
Do I better understand an alcoholic? Are they really "a type" I think about it. I think about reductionism. This book hinges on that.
I don't know. The thing is, I really don't understand from this. I may have missed something, but I don't think for all of this it's getting to what I was looking to read. It would seem to me that a person falls into these things to feel better, to cope-to deal with fears, fear of death so on, to distance from overwhelming pain and grief. Maybe to even escape real self evaluation..
I started with my friend, I'll end there- because I see they have similar issues. And I may see this because I glimpse my own self. In her case she speaks of her great authenticity, her personal insights, her depth of growth but, truthfully? I think she functions in incredibly controlling, dramatic, self-involved, emotionally exhausting, stage-like ways that demand her performance and everyone else is either adoring audience- or don't exist for her. What's the difference here? Burroughs is quoted in interviews, in the text , and in other piece I found today of his memoir-ettes- as so proud of not giving a shit about what anyone thinks (the road to confidence don't you know-such a perversion of Zen I still can't believe he calls this being in the moment), cutting off a relationship with a mother- long a serious stroke survivor -and my gosh he's just cruel in what he says. My former friend-terribly proud for not raising a finger to help her presently dying mom(but loving to use her as an excuse to miss week's of work to go somewhere else to work on her second run at a PHD)-an alcoholic mom-one she let raise her daughter to age nine when her mother wanted custody and she in a fury took back on what was her responsibility in the first place.As she tells everyone how she was a self reliant "single mom"- well, ok, only kinda. What I see in her is no ability to recognize what she received- I saw that echoing in this memoir where there is just so much that needs serious therapy and reduction to what he smirkingly asserts and what is.Can anyone really miss what that stuff on sally Struthers says about him. Mean. I did reflect. I am, and have been, thinking that all the memoir writing in the world is not the same as honest communication and a little bit of forgiveness and honesty.
It's not easy to resist re-writing history, it is about saying "I was," but...there is an awful lot to be said for caring more about who you hurt over who hurt you.
It's a treat to root for Augusten in his recovery journey and it made me want to stay on my path of dry January. The book feels like a friend you can rely on to keep you steady and sober for the month/ sober forever.
And it's such a good book that it's easy to get lost in it. Augusten Burroughs has a way of writing that truly invites you to get lost since it's all so captivating. Maybe it's the mess and craziness of his life. But it's all so fascinating! I loved his book Running with Scissors and remembered getting lost in that one and breezing through it quickly. I didn't expect the same for this book, but I totally fell in love with it.
I definitely would recommend this whether you're trying to get sober, evaluating cutting back your alcohol intake or just looking for a fun, interesting book to read!
Top reviews from other countries

What spoils this is the persistent detail of his disastrous relationships. Apart from first important facts of how his relationships affect his resolve to remain sober, the constant references, which take up a good deal of the storyline, become repetitive and boring.
Alcoholism is the disease of relapse so it’s no good the reader being disappointed when this happens.
Basically, a bit of a shallow rendition of one man’s journey from drunkenness to sobriety.



