Drug of Choice: Heroin Considered to be one of the most innovative and culturally influential artists of the 20th Century, Beat writer and postmodernist author William S. Burroughs was dogged by a heroin addiction for most of his adult life. Born into a wealthy family, Burroughs studied English at Harvard University and anthropology as a postgraduate before going on to medical school in Vienna. After being turned down to serve in the US Navy to serve in World War Two, he worked a number of jobs and picked up the drug habit that marked the rest of his life. All three of his most notorious and controversial semi-autobiographical novels, Queer, Junkie, and Naked Lunch, were reflective of his relationship with heroin. In Junkie, he wrote The question is frequently asked: Why does a man become a drug addict? The answer is that he usually does not intend to become an addict. You dont wake up one morning and decide to be a drug addict. It takes at least three months shooting twice a day to get any habit at all.' While he did have periods off the drug, he died of a heart attack aged 83 on a methadone maintenance program.
