New York Times bestselling author Augusten Burroughs talks about addiction, his new book, and why not it’s not a good idea to run with scissors.

Augusten, before we get started, let me take the opportunity to thank you sincerely for lending your intellect and time to our humble publication; with your upcoming book release I'm sure both are in great demand.

1) On the issue of time and having a demanding schedule, if you could tell the world to "sod off" for a day and do anything or go anywhere by yourself with an Amex black card, how would this scenario play out? The pitiful truth? Is that I wouldn't know what to do. I would be so overwhelmed by "options" that I would sit on the edge of the bed, stunned, gazing absently at the television until I got sucked into something stupid. And old; like way, way over. I would be sitting there and Titanic would come on and I would end up watching every minute of it and thinking, GOD, Kate Winslet looks beautiful when she's wet. And by the time I looked up, it would be 9PM and I would be like, oh screw it. And I'd just fall back on the pillows, grab my laptop and rent a bunch of movies from iTunes. I wish I could tell you, "I would go to Paris, stay at The Ritz, buy a Louis Vuitton belt, and then take the train to London." But that just isn't true. Presented with every possible option and endless funds I would do absolutely nothing.

2) Since you no longer have a 9-5 advertising industry career, what would you say is your favorite hour of the day/ night and why? I love the early morning because, and this sounds so odious, it's a new day. All my life I HATED mornings for this reason. But now, I never know what's going to happen and I find the day exciting. By 3PM I am totally over it and just want 1AM to hurry the fuck up and get here already. Then at around 10PM I kind of perk up for a while.

3) Many gay men seem to have a great capacity for expressing themselves through their chosen medium. Do you often find gay men accosting you seeking either advice or to attach their name to yours? If so how do you deal with the "All About Eve" artist/apprentice like demands for your talent? I haven't really noticed a heavy percentage of gay men, specifically, approaching me and seeking advice or whatever. But lots of young people definitely do—gay, straight, bi, whatever. Just young people who are ON FUCKING FIRE and desperate to express themselves.

4) What is something that is yours and only yours, not to be shared with anyone else? Well, there is a brief period of my life—between Running with Scissors and Dry that I will never write about, never speak about and never discuss. The lost years. Which shall remain at the bottom of my sea. Other than this? Not much.

5) The ad line for your new memoir conveys that we finally get to find out just why you were "running with scissors," which personally, I think is a prospect a lot of people are excited about. To further understand this metaphor I'd like to ask: if you were running with scissors, were you holding the blades or the handle? Did you fall at some point, and if so, how bad was the ER bill under the Bush Administration? All right, let me attempt an answer: I would have been running with the blades of the scissors pointed inward, toward my chest. I would have stumbled, fallen on the scissors, slipped, fallen into them once again, slipped a second time and this time accidentally slid my arm over the blade, opening an artery. Under the Bush Administration, none of my health care costs would have been covered, so the puncture would have become infected and sepsis would have set in.

6) Would you tell us what to expect from the new memoir [A Wolf at the Table], without spoiling the surprise? I have written enough to know: that thing you really DON'T want to write about? That's what you should write about. It's advice I have given many a young author and I had to constantly remind myself of these very words.

It was grueling. Every word was like a tooth, extracted. I had to face certain things about my father—and myself—that were uncomfortable to face, on paper, publicly. Ultimately, I think a lot of men—young or old—had complex, difficult relationships with their fathers. I was uncomfortable with what my body of work said about me because almost nowhere had I written about my father and yet he was THE rocket fuel for my life.

Running With Scissors left many people with the impression that my mother was sort of the primal, driving-force relationship for me, but that isn't true. That was just an easier story to tell. I couldn't have written A WOLF AT THE TABLE before I wrote it. I didn't have the technical skills, I didn't have the patience, and I didn't have the detachment.

Also, just as I began writing, I entered a profound depression, the first of my life, and only in retrospect do I understand that my brain sort of hijacked itself, hurled me into this depressed state so that I could get to the core emotions the book demanded. I don't even know how all of this sounds. I probably sound completely crazy or pretentious. But writing this book was just such a transformative experience. Dry was similar, because I was writing to save my life. Dry is based on my journals, so as that life was unfolding, I was writing about it, capturing it on literary video, if you will. And the process of writing is what enabled me to function. So the writing was medicine. Similarly, the writing of WOLF was medicinal, but for different reasons. WOLF is more of a sculpted book than I typically write. I think that comment will make sense only once you've read the book.

7) Going back to your earlier novel, Dry, you describe your fight against your addiction with alcoholism. It was very powerful and one of the first times I felt compelled to email you praise. Most successful former addicts adopt some form of new less harmful crutch to fill the void left by their addiction. For example, if you were to pass by the church basement on A.A. night you'd probably see all types of people milling around outside enjoying a cigarette and strong yet bad coffee. Do you have any new crutches like the ones described? I kind of cross-addicted to writing. I have detected in my brain a familiar neural firing pattern. At times, I will get the same sensation when I write that I once obtained through drinking. The difference is, the writing is opposite of drug or alcohol abuse. It's all about going inside instead of running away from what's inside. I have this document I wrote just before I stopped drinking. I'd had a realization and wrote, "I am going at 100 MPH all the time, just GO, GO, GO, AWAY, AWAY, AWAY and I realize, I need to do just what I'm doing, except I need to do it in the opposite direction. I need to go INSIDE and stop trying to life off from the surface. And I need to write. It doesn't matter what I write, I can figure it out as I go along and this figuring will leave me with a paper trail that might be useful, that might be...writing." So: writing and nicotine gum.

8) The majority of your writing is influenced by your upbringing as the adopted child of a slightly insane psychotherapist without many boundaries. Yet you don't seem to be as outspoken against obtaining psychological help as say, Tom Cruise, despite your experiences. I think therapy can be hugely beneficial—it was to me, in my post-Scissors years. But it's important to select a superb therapist. And I would personally ask somebody you trust for a recommendation. Then I would interview the therapist, as you would interview any potential employee. This is a person who is going to be fiddling around inside your head—kind of like a neurosurgeon, but without the blade. So you don't want to just pick somebody because they had an ad on Craig's List.

9) Since many Virginia Tech students reside in our community I'd like to touch on the subject of your formal education versus your life experience. You admit to not finishing High School and having only limited experience in the collegiate setting; yet despite this, you managed a successful career in the advertising industry and later became a New York Times bestselling author. What would you say to our readers who might be experiencing disappointment or conflict about their education, or more generally their path in life? This is the most difficult question you've asked. And it's an excellent question. I guess I would say conflicted feelings are a part of life. Conflicted feelings extend well beyond college and you will encounter them in every relationship, at every job, in whatever career you choose. Though if the conflict is profound, there may be a more serious issue that needs to be addressed. Which brings me to the second portion of your question. The path in life. I am a firm believer in following one's dreams, or to be less prosaic about it, doing that which you most want to do. If you come from a long line of lawyers, and your parents expect this of you and you are in school to fulfill these expectations, but secretly, inside? You want to be a history teacher? You should be a history teacher.

...One is always safest trusting one's own instincts, one's own desires. But what complicates the issue is that many people do not know what they want to do in life. And this makes them feel panic. Which, of course, further prevents them from discovering what it is they love.

...I do not have many regrets, but one of them is that I didn't go to college. I wish I had escaped into school and not spent so much time and emotional energy, just a tremendous amount, running away. But I hated school because I got fucked over by the adults at my junior high. They ran all these standardized tests on me and deduced that I was retarded, or borderline. So they installed me in a class with learning disabled students. And my problem was not that school was too difficult for me. It was that school was too boring for me to bother with. I wish I could have gone straight from the 4th grade directly into M.I.T. or Yale where I would have studied astrophysics.

We've covered a lot of serious ground so far in this interview, I'd like to turn the tables and ask a few less serious yet interesting questions.

10) I'm sure you're in the position of having to travel a great deal. Creature comforts aside, whose company would you most prefer, the quiet "well to do" up in business class or the more interesting "plebes" in coach? First class. I'm tall and have a really bad back, so coach and business are torture for me. I need to be as close to flat as possible. If not first class, I would truly rather fly down in the basement of the plane, with all the baggage. I could just crawl into a sleeping bag, right on the floor and watch videos on my iPod. I would be totally fine with that. So it's not an elitist thing, this first class only thing of mine. It's strictly a position-in-physical-space issue.

11) As one writer to another, what is your favorite method of execution? For example which would you prefer to use; a trusty laptop, a typewriter, fountain pen or No. 2 pencil and marble covered comp book...please explain why? Only a laptop. If I had to write with a pen and paper? I would be a waiter instead. And if it's a PC it has to be an IBM ThinkPad. But I prefer a Macbook Pro.

12) OK, we know you mostly through your public persona, but let me pose a hypothetical question once again. It's any hour of the day where you happen to have some free time. You come home, lock the several locks on your NYC apartment and pull the shades. You can do whatever you want with no one watching. What would you do? Easy. I would go to the refrigerator and get a Blenheim Ginger Ale, change into sweatpants and a t-shirt and flop on the bed with the dogs. Then I'd open whatever book is on the table beside me and just vanish.

13) This next question speaks to intellectual and physical nourishment. If I were to have enough gas in my car to make it to New York City, willing to risk my life on the Jersey Turnpike, and also willing to face certain arrest for breaking and entering, what books would I find in your "to read" pile? What would my eyes be drawn to first in your refrigerator? You would find a biography of Herman Melville, Gloria Vanderbilt's memoir about the death of her son, Duma Key by Stephen King, collected works of Hawthorne, a galley of my own next book marked up with things to change, and The Sheltering Sky. When you opened my refrigerator you would be stunned by the variety of beverages, some entirely unfamiliar.

14) Despite your dogs' inability to relieve themselves on living turf in lieu of asphalt, your country home sounds marvelously bucolic. If you were going there this weekend, what would be on your list of things to bring? I am at my country house right this moment as a matter of fact and I brought nothing here except my laptop.

15) I recall once a couple of years back that you were the guest programmer on Turner Classic Movies. Despite my daily Ginkgo biloba tablet, I can only remember one of the movies you chose: "Tootsie." What were the others, and if you could have presented more movies from their library which ones would have been at the top of the list? I would have selected Ingmar Bergman movies, for sure. Scenes from a Marriage, maybe. I would have selected The Children's Hour, and Sabrina, with Audrey Hepburn. Or you know what? Maybe I would have just selected one movie and introduced it this way: in Long Day's Journey into Night, Kathryn Hepburn gives what I believe to be the best performance ever captured on film. I just watched this film a few months ago and I studied her throughout, my eyes never left her face. And I have to say, it's a remarkable thing, like the Hoover Dam. It's a "How did she DO that?" thing.

16) Can we interest you in a lifetime subscription to our humble little periodical? Whose lifetime, yours or mine?

Augusten, let me thank you once again for your gracious attention to 16 Blocks and the readers in our community. I hope the interview was as pleasurable for you as the amount of street cred we hope to gain by publishing it. We anxiously await the release of your latest novel, A Wolf at the Table, on April 29th.