Dry

This is one of my all-time favorite books about alcoholism because it’s hilarious. The title has a double meaning because the book is about the author’s attempt to stop drinking but also because Augusten’s humor is incredibly dry.

I found this book before I ever even entertained the notion that I, too, might have an issue with alcohol, and yet, I loved it. I’ve probably read this book at least 10 times, and it still makes me laugh despite the fact that it’s become all too real for me. 

Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs was the most vivid memoir I had ever read, a frank account of an acutely bizarre childhood.

The author had been sent as a boy by his crazy mother to live with her psychiatrist, a mental health professional who was just as crazy and presided over the most dysfunctional household ever described in a book. After I finished reading Scissors, I wondered what the consequences were for the author as an adult.

The follow-up, Dry, answers that question in a more fascinating memoir that is drenched with the lurid details of the… show more.

I read this book until my eyes burned when I first got sober. 

I resonated deeply with Augusten’s wit, his hilarious resistance to sobriety, and his ultimate surrender. It was the first addiction memoir that made me laugh out loud and boy, did I need a laugh.

When I was two years sober I went to New York and did a little “Dry” recovery tour, popping into many of the recovery spaces he wrote about so beautifully in Dry.