Burroughs, the sardonic and witty narrator, never does anything halfway. Growing up in a dysfunctional household (an understatement) with no boundaries has left him with a no-holds-barred approach to life. He secures a job as an advertising copywriter at 19 because no one has ever told him he couldn’t. When he drinks, he drinks to excess and skates by on his natural talent. He is so deep in the well of his own alcoholism that he is shocked when Greer and Elenor confront him with an intervention and force him into rehab. His excuses are typical: It’s Manhattan, everybody drinks. I’m still functional. At least I’m not uptight, like Greer. Buried beneath the cynicism and nonchalance, however, is Burroughs’s deeply troubling past: He was given up by his mother to her unethical psychiatrist, endured a childhood of chaos and almost limitless freedom, and survived sexual assault at age 13 by a man of 33. Statistically, the author’s trauma is an immense predictive factor for his substance use.

Through all of his trials and pitfalls—the rocky relationships, the guilt and self-loathing, the hypocrisy of his job, the feel-good rituals of rehab—Burroughs maintains his sense of humor. It is his self-defense mechanism, his detour around his past trauma and present regrets.