Fabian's Reviews > Junky

“Junky” is a promise and a warning. The warm bath of morphine intoxication is juxtaposed with the horror of addiction, the agony of withdrawal and the loss of the addict's ego. William S. Burroughs conceals nothing, glosses over nothing and yet tells succinctly, almost in a conversational tone, of blood in the needle, of nightmares, of humiliation and madness.

Many of the small scenes seem redundant and yet reflect the life of the addict. After all, what else could it be but the nauseating glide along a downward spiral at the end of which not fulfillment but the painful greed for the next fulfillment awaits? All the petty and grand criminal acts that go hand in hand with addiction, the fleeting acquaintances, the tricks and false pleasures - they don't disguise the fact that this is about something much more fundamental: the desperate search of a restless, bored soul for the feeling of being alive. And at some point, this feeling can only be grasped on the brink of death.