Dry: Why?

I've been sick lately, which means plenty of dozing on the couch, half-reading books. Yesterday I plowed through Augusten Burrough's memoir Dry in its entirety. It's about a gay guy who's an alcoholic and goes into rehab, then gets better until his friend dies of AIDS and he relapses.

There were some nice turns of phrase in the book and the story was interesting enough to keep reading. In the end, I just didn't care that much. The protagonist was a rich guy who had every opportunity a person could possibly want, and blew it, generally, because he made bad decisions. Alcoholism is a disease, and the author had an extremely traumatic childhood, and I sympathize across-the-board. But it doesn't make the book more interesting to me.

Now Leaving Las Vegas -- THAT'S an interesting story about alcoholism. And Infinite
Jest has much more interesting AA scenes -- more vivid descriptions, more interesting characters.

Still, those were novels and Dry is a memoir. I don't deny that Augusten Burroughs has had some weird experiences -- it's just that, personally, I'd prefer to read some of the other millions of books out there first.