However, that, too, eventually loses the novelty factor, and within a few months, Bill is using heroin. His dissatisfaction with his new, sedate life takes him to New Orleans, where he starts having regular sex with men. Nevertheless, he faces a problem he wasn't prepared for-boredom. He moves to the Brownsville area of Texas and manages to stay sober for a few months. To escape the law, Bill flees New York City, but before he does, he attempts to get sober.

His journey leads him to a group that turns out to be police informers, and legal troubles come crashing down around him. The steady things keeping Bill afloat-his family, a consistent job, respectable friends and colleagues-diminish until his life is totally consumed by shadier types and the quest for more junk. Not surprisingly, they take a backseat to his drug use and are rarely among his primary concerns. Meanwhile, Bill's wife and children are still in his life. He engages in petty crime and becomes a small-time dealer himself to support his growing dependence.

'I drink a lot of coffee,' he says, 'but you know what's really addictive? Heroin.' His habit propels him through the dark underworld of New York City. It doesn't take long for Bill to develop a full-fledged addiction. The novel opens in 1945 with his first experience shooting morphine. Thirty-year-old William 'Bill' Lee is a native Midwesterner living in New York City. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting as a gritty and realistic picture of twentieth-century addiction. Originally published in 1953, under the pseudonym William Lee, the story centers on a young man's drug experiences and ever-evolving dependence on heroin or “junk.” The novel is both a landmark work of the Beat generation and a defining testimony in the history of drug-related literature, ranking alongside Hunter S. Junky is a semi-autobiographical novel by American author William S.

Junky by William S. Burroughs