‘Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means to increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life’. This is the junk equation, the way in which heroin redefines the addict’s world. Burroughs’s cult classic is a raw, semi-autobiographical account of drug addiction, which outraged America and influenced generations of writers to come. He relates with unflinching realism the highs and lows of dependency: euphoria, hallucinations, ghostly nocturnal wanderings and strange sexual encounters, the quests to ease the hunger of the needle, the horrors of cold turkey and back again. Junky is a dark, powerful and mesmerizing account of one man’s challenge to turn self-destruction into art.